₦airaland Forum

Press Release.

Extrajudicial Killings in Abia by Security Agents: An Avoidable Invitation to Anarchy - Otti

An Abia Citizen and the 2019 APGA governorship candidate, Dr. Alex Otti OFR received with utmost sadness and disappointment, the latest report of extrajudicial killing of a young man at Ebem Ohafia, in Ohafia LGA of Abia state, an incident which has added to the growing number of extrajudicial killings involving security agents since government ordered a lockdown in a bid to prevent the spread of Coronavirus in the state.

Otti views the latest killing and others before it as vicious, humiliating, senseless and highly provocative, and therefore states the following:

1. That it's disgraceful and a clear manifestation of incompetence and unprofessionalism for security agents to have wasted five innocent lives of promising youths in different parts of Abia, even when no single case of Coronavirus has been officially recorded in the state.

2. That unlike what is obtainable in some parts of the country where youths are generally violent, majority of Abia youths are artisans and business men and women who go about their legitimate businesses very peacefully, just as Abia does not have history or culture of violence and militancy that should warrant the level of extreme violence being unleashed on Abia youths by extortionist security agents who seem to have found the state as a fertile ground to make quick money.

3. That the incessant killing of Abia youths has the propensity to ignite umcontrollable violence and general breakdown of law and order as witnessed in Ohafia LGA where spontaneous protest and violence erupted following the death of the 17 year old boy who was gruesomely murdered by a policeman.

4. That since the Abia state police command has officially stated that the policemen, including the one that pulled the trigger that killed the boy were on an illegal operation and acted under the influence of alcohol, there's need for a decisive action to be taken against these policemen whose actions have brought unbearable sorrow and agony to the boy's family, his community and Abia as a whole.

5. That since the Abia police command appears helpless in the face of the daily extrajudicial killings, against the expectations of the citizenry, Abia state government should without further delay officially engage the national hierarchy of the security agencies to directly intervene in a bid to halt the ongoing senseless killing of innocent Abians. Dr. Otti will also assist in intervening to quickly halt the unprovoked killings.

6. Finally, Dr. Otti sends his heartfelt condolences to the families of all victims of recent extrajudicial killings in the state and prays God to grant their souls eternal repose. He further called on government to ensure that the affected families get justice.

Ferdinand Ekeoma
Media Assistant to
Dr. Alex Otti
18/04/2020.

Here's a must read piece that truly touches the fundamental economic actions that should be taken in the face of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Enjoy it!

BETWEEN COVID 1.9 AND HUNGER 2.0

BY ALEX OTTI (OUTSIDE THE BOX)

“There is a very serious virus that is killing people much higher than coronavirus. That virus is hunger; there is hunger virus and it’s very serious. You need to go round the country into the villages, into the towns and see how people are really struggling to survive.” Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar 111, Sultan of Sokoto, (March 12, 2020)

As I was ruminating over the title of this piece, I remembered an experience I had about three decades ago. I had just qualified for a car loan from my employers. I didn’t want to buy the popular car that my mates were buying at that time; Peugeot 504 and 505. My friend had bought a Peugeot 505 and we had all sorts of sad experience with it. It would break down every now and again. If it was not the bushing one day, it would be the alternator another day, or the gasket the following day. Sometimes, on our way to work, the car would just ‘die’ on the bridge and we would have to alight and push it before it started again. That wasn’t going to be my portion, I promised myself. So, I added some personal funds to my car loan and after some arduous search, I ended up buying a ‘Tokunbo’ Nissan Stanza (I don’t believe Nissan makes that model anymore).

My new car performed very well until I decided to install an air conditioner in it. That was the beginning of my trouble. In the first place, I realised that the air conditioner worked very well early in the morning and late in the evening. These were exactly the times one could do without the air conditioner. One day, in the face of a scorching sun and with many friends in the car, I decided to use the air conditioner in the afternoon. That was my greatest undoing. I watched the temperature go up on the dashboard. As the temperature was going up, my blood pressure was going up as well. Suddenly, I noticed some area boys giving me sign that the car engine was smoking. I quickly stopped the car to see what was happening. As one of the overzealous area boys opened the bonnet, he made straight for the radiator which at that time was already boiling. Before one could stop him, he had opened the cover only for very hot water to explode onto his entire face, giving him severe burns.

I wanted to send him to the hospital, but he refused, preferring to collect money from me and go and treat himself. He collected the money and disappeared. I could bet he was not going to any hospital. The heat had cracked what they referred to as the vehicle’s “half engine” and I had to change that in addition to some hoses that had also been damaged. On going back to the engineer who installed the air conditioner, he explained that the engine capacity was 1.6CC and to enjoy air conditioners, the engine capacity had to be at least 2.0CC. In fact, most new cars coming out about then had a minimum of 2.0 litres as they were then called. From then onwards, to use my air conditioner in the afternoon, I had to carry some water and radiator coolant along with me. I had to subsequently save up money to finally buy a Honda Accord 2.0 while I sold the problem, the Nissan, to someone else.

While I am sure that we all understand the Covid19, the Hunger 2.0 refers to the level of hunger of a higher degree than had ever been witnessed before that can make someone to disobey instructions even if such was meant to save his life. To stem the scourge of coronavirus, most countries have ordered a lockdown and restricted movement. This had been seen to yield results as even the city of Wuhan from where the Pandemic started was under lock down for months and has now been declared Covid-19-free. Countries that did not want to implement restrictions have had to pay dearly. Nigeria has not been any different as the Federal government ordered the lockdown of Abuja Federal Capital Territory, Lagos and Ogun States with effect from March 27, 2020. As the Federal government was issuing its orders, many state governments either shut their borders or restricted movements in their respective states. It would be safe to say that the entire country had been under some form of lockdown for close to two weeks now.

The consequences of the lockdown have been quite significant. Most companies shut down except for those in essential services and markets closed down completely, with very few exceptions. Religious worship centres were not left out and ceremonies including birthdays, weddings and burials were banned. Some security agencies and government officials who were assigned to implement the directives took to the streets. Some overzealous ones amongst them took the law into their hands and started applying the “Indian treatment” on offenders and manhandling those that they deemed to be in breach of the stay-at-home order. There were reports of citizens being shot and even killed in some parts of the country for contravening the lockdown order. One outlier was the Chairman of the Federal Capital Territory Administration, Mr. Ikharo Attah. Mr. Attah conducted his assignment in Abuja with uncommon discipline and competence. He shut down churches and mosques in a remarkably decent manner. In a church, he reportedly waited patiently for the service to end before proceeding to arrest the Pastor in charge. He didn’t do that without eloquently explaining to the “man of God” with biblical references why what he was doing was wrong. In mosques and other moslem worship centres he copiously quoted the Quran to the transgressors before shutting them down. The passion and dexterity that this gentleman brought to his job was very infectious. The position of this column is that these are the kind of people that should man our public sector and our political space. We salute and commend Mr. Ikharo Attah. We are indeed proud of him.

Our concern today is not the churches and mosques and other worship centres that chose to flout the sit-at-home order. It is also not about those who chose to throw lavish birthday parties and burial ceremonies in contravention of the order. Our worry is the people who cannot afford to stay at home because of the counter instruction being issued by their stomachs. Depending on where you are and who you relate with, you may not know that these people constitute close to half of the population. According to the World Poverty Clock, we have 96m Nigerians living below poverty line of less than $1.90 or N720 per day. This means that of the total world’s 600m poorest people, over 6% are from Nigeria. Furthermore, 63% of the number or 56m people reside in the rural areas while 36% or 40m of such people dwell in the urban areas. In fact, about 40m of the people that fall under this category are unemployed. The rest are involved in menial jobs and therefore, live by the day. They are the artisans, the petty traders and labourers, the poor taxi drivers, the peasant farmers, the scavengers and all such people who survive mainly on what they earn daily. Many of them do not have bank accounts as they would argue that their money is not enough to feed them and their families and therefore cannot afford the luxury of a bank account.

The ruling class must answer for our compatriots in this category. We may have mouthed some platitudes in the past and made some pledges that we had no plans to fulfill. I believe that Covid 19 has provided us an opportunity to pay attention to these people and begin to plan for them. We are aware that the Federal Government has been implementing a cash transfer initiative in the last couple of years. The only concern is that we don’t believe that this scheme has been transparently handled so far. If it were, how come that five years into this administration and in 2020, someone is still paying cash to them? How can we tolerate that mode of payment in a system where the Central Bank is introducing the last phase of cashless policy countrywide? How come we couldn’t get the beneficiaries to open accounts without which, they would not receive their payments? Exactly how many people have we been paying this sum in the last few years? The issue of the cash transfer of N5,000.00 a month is not necessarily our concern today. The fact that four months advance payments were approved for the beneficiaries is also of little importance today. Our major concern is the arrangement that was made for these people as governments at all levels implement the lockdown policy. And this must be in addition to the conditional cash transfer. And until the government begins to think seriously about this, the lockdown policy may work for a while but not for too long. Questions like am I better off remaining indoors and dying of hunger or taking the risk of being infected as I go in search of food would be agitating the minds of many victims. The discerning ones may plot a mental graph and conclude that the chances of contacting the virus are limited, after all, some of them have openly said that Covid 19 is a big man’s disease. Someone had in fact argued that it was the disease of people who travel abroad and for him that had not thought of securing an international passport, not to talk of securing a visa and buying a ticket, the chances of infection are nonexistent. Of course, we all know that the argument is fallacious.

So, what should we use this opportunity to do right away? We believe that like we had argued a fortnight ago, we must learn some lessons from this outbreak. One lesson we highlighted was that this virus is a leveler. Having leveled us, beside paying attention to healthcare delivery, we should also pay serious attention to the most vulnerable amongst us. We must, therefore ensure that in the first place, we do not only know who they are and where they are, but we must also know how many they are. We must get them to open accounts with commercial or Microfinance banks. We may not be very certain, but we feel there is no local government in this country that does not have some form of banking presence. At least, we are privy to the CBN policy of establishing a NIRSAL Microfinance bank in each of the 774 LGAs. Even in the absence of physical branches, some banks, in partnership with Telcos had introduced the agency banking model, bringing services to the unbanked. We believe this would also be of interest to CBN as it would push the number of accounts with Bank Verification Number (BVN) from the current 40m to more than the 100m target it had set for 2025, immediately. Following this would be the monthly payment of at least N10,000.00 per month for food for the vulnerable. This will amount to about N96b every month and N960b for 10 months which is less than 10% of our budget.

Someone may ask where the money would come from. The answer is simple. We are in a war situation and the government should do what countries do when they are in a war situation. All expenses that can wait should wait. Cost of running government should be reduced to the barest minimum. Ways and means should be activated. Support should be given to local manufacture of medication and medical equipment and most importantly, food. The logistics of implementing all these should be worked out by the federal, state and local governments. We have seen some state governments give out food. While we agree that food is necessary, we do not think that governments should be sharing it. The first point is that elsewhere food is dispatched from the government’s Strategic Reserves. We are not aware of the existence of such here. Governments seem to be engendering artificial scarcity and price hikes by buying from the same markets where citizens are buying. In some places, government has bought up all the rice available given its deep pockets. We know that it is neither sustainable nor can it be transparent and efficient.

A few contractors and their collaborators in government will end up the winners . The distribution formula will remain flawed. Lucky beneficiaries end up with what they don’t need while they can’t get what they need. It is therefore, more efficient to support farmers and local industrialists and empower the people to buy from them. Palliatives and Stimulus packages must go directly to consumers and producers respectively for maximum impact. We must avoid anything that tempts us to hand out cash to anyone. It is also likely that when we start the compulsory account opening policy for the beneficiaries, we would realise that the number is much less than the figure we threw up above and therefore the outlay would reduce. We should not be afraid of disbursing funds to people in an economy that would experience another recession in the next few months anyway. This will have the capacity to stimulate the economy, encourage local production and employment, reduce the period of the recession and engender growth. Any other way we do it will lead to more suffering, longer crises and may result in avoidable social unrest. In an attempt at solving a problem, we need not create bigger ones.

Finally, permit me to wish our Christain readers a happy Easter celebration.

Press Release.

Otti Felicitates with Abians on Easter, Prays Against Coronavirus.

The 2019 APGA governorship candidate in Abia state, Dr. Alex Otti OFR has felicitated with the good people of Abia state on the occasion of this year's Easter celebration.

In a release signed by his Media Assistant Ferdinand Ekeoma and made available to news men, Dr. Otti warmly sent his message of love and solidarity to Abians for the privilege of being alive to once again commemorate the death and resurrection of the saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, whose victory over death brought eternal hope to Christendom.

Dr. Otti reminded Abians on the need to draw inspiration from the Supreme and most memorable sacrifice put up on the cross by Jesus Christ to cleanse the sins of mankind, by exhibiting acts of heroic altruism and solidarity to one another, especially at this time of global health crisis created by the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The financial expert called on Abians of all strata, especially those in leadership positions to seize the opportunity created by the Coronavirus Pandemic to take a second look at life vis-a-vis its futility, in the face of the atmosphere of fear, standstill, uncertainty and near hopelessness which has enveloped the world since being hit by the deadly virus, and consider engaging in more acts of godliness and altruism that would at all times edify God and advance the welfare of humanity.

He enjoined Abians to continue to apply all individual safety measures while adhering strictly to the ones put in place by government to halt the spread of Coronavirus, and prayed God to continue to protect Abians until the virus is completely defeated.

Finally, Dr. Otti wished Abians a fantastic Easter celebration, and urged all, especially Christians to reflect on the essence of the Easter celebration and ensure that their conducts appreciably uphold the essence of the season, for the good of mankind and to the glory of God.

Signed

Ferdinand Ekeoma
Media Assistant to
Dr. Alex Otti
11/04/2020.

Coronavirus: Alex Otti Foundation Supply Second Batch of Medical Equipment to FMC, All Aro USA Clinic.

In a bid to sustain the fight against the spread of the deadly Coronavirus Pandemic, the Alex Otti Foundation has supplied the second batch of protective gear to the Federal Medical Centre Umuahia, and the All Aro USA Clinic, in Arochukwu.

The medical equipment which were delivered by representatives of the Alex Otti Foundation, were received by representatives of Federal Medical Centre Umuahia led by the Chief Medical Director, Dr. Michael Onyebuchi, while those meant for the All Aro Clinic, Arochukwu was received by Dr. Chibundu Okpugo

Speaking after the delivery of the medical items, the spokesperson of the Foundation and Media Aide to Dr. Alex Otti, Ferdinand Ekeoma reiterated the Commitment of the Alex Otti Foundation to impacting positively on the lives of Abians, and made it clear that the foundation would sustain every effort geared towards preventing the spread of the deadly virus in Abia.

He explained that after critical analysis, the Alex Otti foundation realised from day one that preventive measures remain the key to defeating the virus, hence its decision to among other things provide strategic medical institutions with the necessary equipment that could enable them attend to people without exposing their own lives to danger, and enjoined Abians to adhere to all safety measures being put in place by government at all levels.

The foundation also through her sister structures distributed thousands of Hand Sanitizers to those in the rural areas, especially the poor who cannot afford to purchase such items at this time of economic hardship.

It would be recalled that the founder of the Alex Otti Foundation, Dr. Alex Otti OFR had some weeks ago unfolded some interventionist measures aimed at preventing the spread of Coronavirus in Abia, and subsequently supplied the first consignment of medical equipment to the FMC Umuahia and Madonna Chatholic Hospital Umuahia respectively through his humanitarian foundation, the Alex Otti Foundation.

Coronavirus: The Global Democratic Pandemic.

Outside The Box

BY ALEX OTTI

Downpressor man

Where you gonna run to

You gonna run to the sea

But the sea will be boiling

You gonna run to the rocks

The rocks will be melting

You drink your big champagne

and laugh all along that day

You can run but you can’t hide

You can’t bribe no one

Them no want no money Them run’f money

That money gets funny

(Peter Tosh, 1977)

The advent of the Coronavirus seems to have forced those who would ordinarily travel out for flimsy or even no reason at all, to stay back home. Those who were abroad when the pandemic broke had to hurry home before the rest of the world shut down their borders and airspaces. The whole thing started like an innocuous affair late December 2019. Wuhan, a modern Chinese city with about 11 million inhabitants, had been hit by a strange form of pneumonia. The world started paying attention by middle of January when fatalities began increasing by the day. Initially, the Chinese were blamed for what was regarded as their local palaver through their lifestyle. Pictures of bat- and snake-eating Wuhanians, were freely and gleefully circulated all over the social media. The situation soon got out of hand as the disease spread to far flung destinations across the world. Before long, the World Health Organisation (WHO) would declare the Coronavirus outbreak, a pandemic. Today, it is the most significant phenomenon throughout the world. There have been all sorts of speculation including conspiracy theories about its true nature and source. Some people have branded it a biological or chemical warfare started by China against the whole world. Some others believe that it is an outcome of the implementation of extreme technology like the 5G or even the outcome of degradation of human immunity resulting from various hybrid experiments. An indigenous variant of these assumptions is that it is not an African disease. Several people, including some respected ‘men of God’, had at the beginning of the pandemic, boasted that it didn’t belong here. The general feeling was that the virus could not survive the heat in Africa and that our own genes were resistant to the virus.

China, on the other hand, faced the scourge with all seriousness it deserved and achieved commendable results. It implemented a strict lockdown policy and quickly contained the spread of the virus. Some other countries have followed the Chinese method with similar results. A few others, however, remained lax about it and the price has been a harvest of rampant infection and deaths. Here in Nigeria, the authorities started strict monitoring and precautionary measures after an index case was recorded in Lagos on February 27, 2020. There are a lot to learn from the outbreak of this virus and I pray that we shall take the lessons.

One of the first lessons is that the world has actually become a global village in a way different from how we understood it. For those who chose to erect physical or psychological walls, we are being taught that when disaster comes, those walls would not protect us. You may be fooled that you are protected from external attacks but the pandemic has shown that with globalization, some phenomena are no respecter of such walls. It is interesting that the US which imposed visa ban on some countries including Nigeria, a few weeks ago, is now calling for medical personnel from all countries, and I believe that includes countries affected by the ban, to come over to the US and help.

Related to this is the fact that in the final analysis, we are all human and therefore equal. The virus is simply a leveler and in a sense, the ultimate democrat and a global citizen. It is no respecter of persons. As it is ravaging the poor man, it not leaving out the rich. It is affecting the black and the white. It is affecting the republican and the democrat. It is affecting Prime Ministers, Princes, Governors, Presidents and their wives. It is affecting the driver, the cook, the house help and the security guard. The poor even seem more prepared since they had been used to dealing with challenges of diseases, hunger, poverty deprivation and even epidemics all through their lives.

This pandemic has shown that little things matter! It is so humbling that some unseen virus has the capacity to bring the entire world to its knees. While governments, particularly the Super powers, were spending heavily in defence budgets trying to outdo each other in research and development of the deadliest weapons and bombs; while they were investing in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and automation, they spared no thought about the possibility of all those being rendered useless by one hitherto unknown virus that travels across borders without visas and passports. Since the virus struck, attention has shifted away from high tech developments and nations are fighting hard to contain the plague. Expenditure is focused on developing and manufacturing a vaccine and medication for this pandemic. It is at this point that humanity understands that in the final analysis, God remains greater than man, even for those who don’t believe in Him. It has become clearer to the nuclear powers of the world that those investments are really nothing but vanity. This Pandemic is capable of wiping out everyone without anyone shooting any bullet. It has exposed the world’s underbelly.

Somehow, everyone has now been forced to stay indoors. Those who never spent time at home; those who were hitherto seemingly too busy to be found at home; those who have many homes both on land, sea and air, are now all forced to hibernate in one of them, the land more like! Those who are infected are forced to remain in their countries. No matter how much money they have, despite their private jets and yatches, they must remain where they are diagnosed for treatment. Their influence is no longer of any consequence. Their private jets can no longer land in the healthcare capitals of the world. In fact, even those cities that made so much money from medical tourism are struggling to cope with their own nationals. They are practically overwhelmed and cannot welcome additional pressure on their overstretched capacity. Someone was lamenting the attitude of selfishness by the developed world which would make the pandemic last longer than necessary. While we have no reason to disagree, we must also refer to cabin attendants who advise aircraft passengers that in the event of loss of cabin pressure, one must fit one’s oxygen mask first before helping others. The truth is that no country, except maybe China, has been able to handle this pandemic effectively and therefore cannot be thinking of extending a hand to the challenged underdeveloped countries.

One major lesson to learn from this Pandemic is that even if out of self-interest, our leaders should fix our healthcare delivery system. This column had in the past screamed itself hoarse on the poor local healthcare delivery system, all to no avail. Available data shows that we spend over a billion dollars annually on medical tourism. We had recommended, and still do now, that investing this same amount locally in the sector, could give us some state of the art medical facility, in preparation for a day like this. No one seemed to have listened. So, the question is why are we doing this to ourselves? Studies have shown that a brand new sophisticated 500 bed hospital on a land size of 40,000 square meters that will employ between 3,000 and 5000 people will cost no more than $750m, even on a very generous budget. With free land and cheap labour, it will cost much less. So, why can’t we decide to have, at the minimum 6 medical villages deployed to the 6 geopolitical zones of the country at the cost of what we spend in three years on medical tourism? This would have the added advantage of creating up to 30,000 direct jobs, and multiples of that in indirect jobs. Besides, there is the benefit of improving our life expectancy and boosting our GDP. Had we done this years ago, we would not be in the kind of mess we find ourselves today. We are like the proverbial local bird that only begins to build its nest when it goes into labour.

We need not deceive ourselves and believe that all is going well with us in the wake of this pandemic. The truth is that we are facing a major problem and there is a reality check loading. We may be reporting low numbers of Covid 19 cases relative to other countries, but the truth is that we are not in a position to confirm our situation with any certainty, because we are unable test a significant number of our people. As at March 25, we were only able to conduct 262 tests nationwide for a population of 200m people. The reason the tests are not happening is lack of equipment to do them. Reports have it that there are only 5 molecular laboratories in the whole country. They are located as follows: 2 in Lagos and 1 each in Abuja, Osun and Edo. Two more in Ibadan and Ebonyi are being expected. Compare this to South Africa with a population of 60million people who have tested over 20,000 people with less than 1000 reporting positive and 2 deaths. We are aware that with the receipt of Jack Ma Foundation support of 20,000 test kits, 100,000 masks and 1,000 protective suites, the situation would change, but not radically. The issue of ventilators is even more worrisome. We have reports that the total number of ventilators in the country is less than 500. This is a necessary piece of medical equipment for the treatment of Covid 19. An attempt made over a week ago by the Alex Otti Foundation to buy a few units from Europe to support hospitals in Abia State, failed woefully. After paying for the ventilators, when our representative went to pick them up, the sellers offered to refund the money because their home government had asked them not sell any ventilators any longer as their own country needed them and had actually bought up all they had at obviously higher prices. This is a major challenge as countries are holding back what is in their countries. This now brings us to the issue of local production. We must find a way to encourage local capacity for a day like this. A few days ago, I engaged Chief Innocent Chukwuma of Innoson Motors who confirmed that his company has the capacity to fabricate ventilators locally. It would require modifying one of their production lines. His problem is that he is not sure of demand and would not be willing to take the risk and incur the huge expense if he does not have enough confirmed orders. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, a company called Dyson which specialises in the manufacture of hand driers, has just been commissioned by the government to rush manufacture 10,000 units of ventilators for use in UK hospitals.

The economic cost of this virus is better imagined than experienced. We can only speculate but one thing that is certain is that it will take several years to wear off. Many countries are rolling out stimulus packages to cushion the effect of the disruption. The US Congress has just passed a $2trillion dollar package for the economy. Our own situation is even worse and indeed could further worsen unless we act fast. It must be stated that the Central Bank of Nigeria has done something that is commendable. It recently announced a stimulus package of N1trillion to support the economy. However, assuming that we share out the said sum equally, every Nigerian would get N5.00. Yes, Five Naira per person. I’m still trying to settle what N10 would do for my wife and I before the money arrives. But what can we do? Oil prices are now below $30 per barrel and there are stories of ships laden with our crude oil floating on the high seas without any buyer in sight. Even at the low price, people are not buying. Our national budget has had to be scaled down in view of the present realities. Our reserves are going down. There are scarcely new foreign investors waiting to come into the country. Exchange rates are shooting through the roof. With close to 100m of our people living by the day and below poverty line, it is doubtful that we can afford a sustained lockdown to contain the virus. Our GDP has been growing so slowly and limping behind our population growth rate. A sustained lockdown will easily fling us back into a recession. We therefore must realise that we have a very difficult situation in our hands.

This may therefore be a good time to look at our economy again. We must open up the economy to private sector initiatives. There is too much public sector presence that suffocates the private sector. This is the time to give them all the incentives to help reflate the economy. We need to immediately put more money in the hands of the people. Where is the money going to come from? Low interest rates which the CBN governor has been pushing is a good policy. That policy alone cannot cut it. Reduction in the cost of governance has become imperative. We cannot continue to ignore it. We must also deliberately identify areas of the economy that we want to promote. If we get it right, we stand the chance of turning this “apocalypse” into a blessing in disguise. If we don’t, we are sure going to end up in a crisis far worse than any economic crisis that we had witnessed in the past. Against our best wishes, we do not see that this pandemic is going to abate anytime soon. We must brace up for a crisis that will last months, if not years. If luck smiles at us and it is contained in the short term, then we must thank God.

Press Release.

Appointment of Prof. Mkpa A. Mkpa As ABSIEC Chairman: A Dangerous Precedent that Should Not Be Allowed to Stand.


The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) Abia state, wishes to unequivocally condemn the recent appointment of Prof. Mkpa Agu Mkpa as the Chairman of the Abia State Independent Electoral Commission (ABSIEC)

For the avoidance of doubt, our position has nothing to do with Professor Mkpa's Personality, Competence, Qualification or Place of Origin, but on the basis of his conspicuous partisanship and unbidden alliance and loyalty to the PDP.

It's a globally forbidden practice in a democracy for an individual whose loyalty lies with a particular political party to head an electoral body which is supposed to be independent, as that would take away the principle of fairness which guides the conduct of an election.

We have seen the swiftness with which Prof. Mkpa struggled to disconnect and distance himself from the PDP following the criticisms that trailed his nomination, yet it hasn't erased the fact that during the last governorship election in Abia, Prof. Mkpa was not only a member of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu's Campaign Advisory Council, but he openly campaigned for him and the PDP, while deploying the harshest of words against Ikpeazu's major opponents in the election. We would want Prof. Mkpa to show bravery, character and honour by accepting this undisputed fact, rather than trying in futility to deny it in what appears like a desperation to occupy the position of ABSIEC Chairman. As an academic, we expect the highest level of integrity from him.

We have had a former Vice Chancellor of ABSU, Professor S. O. Emejuiwe as ABSIEC Chairman, no one raised an eyebrow over his appointment, because he was not perceived as partisan. We also had Retired Justice Akomas who is the immediate past ABSIEC Chairman. In spite of the flaws that marred the election he conducted, no body called for his removal, because he wasn't seen to be partisan, prior to his appointment, even though he was loyal to Ikpeazu while his tenure lasted.

Therefore those who might want to trivialize the opposition against Mkpa's appointment should know that the issue is not personal, but institutional, and that if it's allowed to stand, those who celebrate the unhealthy precedent today, might be victims of its repeated practice tomorrow.

Ikpeazu had appointed people in the past and has been making appointments recently without any opposition to such appointments, hence our expectation that the outrage, opposition and disapproval from millions of Abians which trailed Mkpa's appointment would force him to reconsider the appointment in deference to best practices.

It is also important to remind members of Abia State House of Assembly who have hurriedly confirmed the appointment in spite of widespread opposition, that Abians are taking note of their “stewardship” and connivance that seek to misrepresent their constituents at a time when their robust, and independent legislative engagements should have been impacting positively on the state.

Finally, we want to restate our opposition to the appointment of Prof. Mkpa Agu Mkpa and request for his removal on the following grounds:

1. He is a member of PDP and would be biased and partisan, because his loyalty would remain with his party and the government in power.

2. He openly campaigned for Ikpeazu and the PDP during the last governorship election, while attacking and dismissing Ikpeazu's opponents. For instance, while making a case for the re-election of Ikpeazu in 2019, he unjustly made reference to the Kidnap Kingpin (Osisi Ka Nkwu's) era of terror, and called for Ikpeazu's re-election as a way of avoiding the repeat of what happened then. This statement shows Professor Mkpa as a man who is ready to deploy the instrument of fear, threat and other pedestrian considerations to advance a cause, no matter how unpopular or unjustifiable.


3. His attempt to deny his alliance and loyalty to the PDP has shown him as a man without integrity who would not be able to stand his ground and speak the truth in times of pressure even as an Electoral Boss.

4. Professor Mkpa was the Secretary to the State Government under the former PDP ignoble rule of T. A. Orji that gave birth to the present regime.

Should the state government ignore our fair demand and proceed to have Prof. Mkpa as ABSIEC Chairman,we shall be left with no option than to institute legal action against the state government to force it to do the right thing.

Singed

Hon. Nkem Okoro (JP)
State Chairman, APGA.
11/03/2020

Let’s Reject Technology for a Change

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI

“Every guinea fowl calls out in the language of its own hometown” – Old African Proverb

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” – John Maynard Keynes, (1883-1946)

Today, I am going to depart slightly from my tradition of avoiding any discussion relating to my previous life in the last financial institution that I headed, namely, the erstwhile Diamond Bank PLC. I will, however, disappoint those who are expecting me to comment on some of the more recent events in the bank. My response remains that I do not have the anointing to know what is happening at, and to, a place that I left more than six years ago. A few things on record include that I was blessed and lucky to work with a team of intelligent and highly skilled people who were exceptionally motivated, and who delivered consistently on all performance indices. All the credit for the successes we recorded during my four-year tenure goes to them, individually and collectively.

All that we achieved at Diamond Bank was made possible through the utilisation of our most important asset; our people, who always strove to do more to remain on top. One of such people that I would use this column to celebrate today is a gentleman called Premier Oiwoh, the current CEO of the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS). He was then the General Manager and Head of Operations and Technology. He equally had an excellent and talented army of young men and women working with him. I called him up one day and challenged him to come up with a solution that would enable our customers make both local and international payments, from the comfort of their homes and offices. He quickly assembled a small but dedicated team and set to work.

In a few weeks they made me a presentation that surpassed all my expectations. What I had in mind was a system that would work on a desktop computer. They went ahead to develop one that could, in addition, work on mobile handheld devices. When all the tests and checks were completed, we implemented the solution successfully. They improved the security of the service by developing a token that could be generated automatically. I remember visiting a bank in the UK years later where they introduced a manually generated token to me with much fanfare. I literally laughed them to scorn, and proudly announced to them that we had automated tokens a while back where I came from in Nigeria. Now, the flip side of the invention by my team of technology wizards was that because many of our customers, particularly the youthful ones, jumped on the application and practically stopped coming to the bank to carry out their transactions, our manpower requirements continued to drop even when we were expanding..

Duncan Eke, an exceptionally brilliant engineer graduated on top of his class with a First Class honours degree. I believe he is from Bayelsa State. Years ago, he was a senior management staff in Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, now ExxonMobil. He oversaw the Mobil Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) facility in Bonny, Rivers State. The multimillion-dollar NGL is basically a project aimed at reducing gas flaring as the plant converts associated gas to natural gas for the export market. I visited Mr. Eke shortly after the commissioning of the plant and was pitching for the business of the staff of the company. I was surprised to hear him explain the level of automation of the plant. He demonstrated on his laptop, how the plant was managed without human intervention. To cut the story short, he only required security men to secure the facility and could run the facility from his office in Port Harcourt without any human being. I was surprised to learn that this level of investment was only able to generate jobs for machines and not human beings who actually needed the jobs.

I brought these examples up, in one breath, to say that we have what it takes in Nigeria, when we set our minds to it, and in the other breath, to warn that in trying to be like the rest of the world in our quest for technological advancement, we can unwittingly initiate what may bring us severe social and economic consequences

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, there was massive unemployment in the United States of America. Theodore Roosevelt, who was President, sought ways of reflating the economy. He proposed the ‘New Deal’ in which he saw creation of job opportunities as one of the strategies for bringing the economy back to life. He encouraged all ways of putting money in the hands of the people. According to his radical ideas, it was important to create employment, even if it meant paying people to dig holes and fill them up again. The import of this story is that Nigeria is at the point in her economic history when there is need to take radical measures to solve our problems. In my considered opinion, the biggest challenge facing us today is how to ensure that many of our citizens have jobs. Creating employment for an economy that is in the doldrums is a very important in reviving it. In the same vein, I believe that the Nigerian situation is one that begs us to look at the challenges that we face and proffer solutions that are tailored to our peculiar needs. With that in mind, we must note that there are benefits that technology can bring to Nigeria, but it is important that we adopt technology with some circumspection and only to the extent that it helps us solve our problems, without creating worse ones.

I would posit that unemployment, especially that of the youth, is the biggest challenge that we face in Nigeria and all our efforts must be geared towards creating more jobs. While not advocating that we retreat to ancient practices, we must look at how to reduce the job queue and provide jobs to the teeming masses. If technology stands in the way of achieving this, then it is time to jettison aspects of such devices or we will all be consumed by the force of angry jobless youth that is growing every day. The statistics are not very reliable, but even at that, the general trend is worrisome. A general unemployment rate of about 30% and a youth unemployment rate of around 55% are scary numbers. Note that the correct numbers are more likely to be worse than these. We had maintained that there is a direct relationship between banditry and unemployment. The higher the rate of unemployment, the higher the crime rate and other social ills. In order to curb crime therefore, we must begin to think seriously about how to productively engage our people, particularly the youth; who are most susceptible to crime and the evils of idleness.

We are all aware of the industrial revolution trajectory. It is said that the fourth industrial revolution is now in force across the universe. After the agricultural revolution came the Industrial Revolution proper, which basically heralded the introduction of new manufacturing processes in the United States and Europe. This was also called the era of the steam engine. New processes were developed and some of the key concepts that came from this were mass production, division of labour and the assembly line. This stage was quickly succeeded by the age of science and knowledge, which eventually gave rise to the third industrial revolution, the digital technology era. With each age, came improvements in productivity and displacement of labour by machines. The fourth industrial revolution marked the introduction of cloud computing, mobile technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D Printing, and Big Data. This is also referred to as the Information Age.

Before the industrial revolution of the 18th century, the world was basically agrarian. The loom and the steam engine were inventions that simplified production. Steam power was used for agriculture, textile manufacturing and transportation. Steamships, steam rails and steam engines made life a lot easier. Labour was still central to production. Factories required a lot of hands and hours as most processes were still largely manual. By the 20th century, the second industrial revolution was birthed. This is the one we referred to above as the age of Science and Mass Production. Under this revolution were all sorts of inventions. Airplanes, cars and chemicals were all invented and life became a lot easier and better as more inventions were made. These inventions were applied to factories and productivity increased with the assembly line, division of labour and specialisation being major drivers. Urban dwelling increased and more people were productively engaged. To provide for the increasing level of urbanization, more scientific inventions were made. Radios, electricity, telephones, and mass-produced items were added to the inventions

The third industrial revolution that started in the 1950s ushered in computing in its rudimentary stage all the way to the Personal Computers and laptops, semi-conductors and then the internet. This was the disruptive technological stage. Those who are old enough will remember the mainframes of those days and how people used to go to the computer rooms to process data and conduct tasks which today are done with hand-held devices, including telephones. Comparing those days to these days is like comparing day and night.

The fourth industrial revolution is already here with us. This revolution in some way seems to derive from the third revolution. We now have electric cars, artificial Intelligence, miniature sensors, genetic sequencing and editing, cryptographic technology, 3D printing and of course cloud computing. One major invention of this era that is redefining life is robotics. Robotics simply means creating artificial human beings to do what man can and cannot do. Because they are machines, they are precise, hardly make mistakes and can execute assigned tasks flawlessly. When armed to go to war or attack, they cannot be successfully easily repelled. Though created by man, humans cannot do what robots can do!.

Each revolution or era brings with it both positive and negative outcomes. While the positive ones are very easily discernible and get celebrated, we seem to ignore or wish away the negative repercussions. Job losses and displacements go with technology. In a world where population growth is trailing economic growth, this should hardly be a problem. In Nigeria where the reverse is the case, I believe we should worry. One of the ways to worry is to deliberately factor it into our planning. We must acknowledge the fact that different parts of the world experience different stages of the Industrial Revolution even as the world is not waiting for anyone. So, while the developed world is massively investing in the fourth industrial revolution, some other parts of the world should be honest to themselves and decide where they are in the industrial revolution trajectory and channel their resources where they belong. By the way, we are not arguing that every country should follow a defined trajectory as that is not historically tenable. The point we are raising is that countries must understand the needs of their people and based on the resources available to them, act in such a manner that would give them maximum benefits.

It is along these lines that one quarrels with the “leapfrogging” theory. This theory simply encourages underdeveloped countries to jump from their positions to where developed countries are in the development continuum. What happens is that people end up becoming so consumerist that they position themselves as early adopters of modern technology while poverty, hunger and decay are the order of the day in their countries. I believe it was for this reason that the United Nations noted a few years ago that more people in the world have more access to a mobile phone than basic sanitation. It has been documented that all the industrial revolutions came into being as a result of choices made by individuals. We also acknowledge the fact that sometimes researchers develop and design technologies that change the way people live, work and relate with each other, but the truth is that if those technologies receive little or no adoption, they will die a natural death.

Our submission therefore is that we should make choices that solve our local problems rather than following the Jones’s. We should understand that based on our realities, we should be focusing on the second industrial revolution that demands skilled and unskilled labour to ensure we create jobs for our people. The only leapfrogging that would help us here is that given that someone else had made the required inventions several decades ago, we should not reinvent the wheel but copy what had already been invented and implement. In this wise, instead of channeling our investment to the area of big data and sophisticated technology, we should invest in areas of high labour intensity and rudimentary technology. This is one of the ways we can suck up the large reserve army of the unemployed and ensure a low crime environment and better standard of living for our burgeoning population. Bearing the foregoing in mind, the idea of going back to revive agriculture makes a compelling sense. Agriculture will help soak up the huge population of unemployed youth and will also provide basic nutrition to a population that is growing at an alarming rate with little or no opportunities to provide them useful jobs.

Bayelsa: Thou Shall See the Land But Will Not Set Foot on It

By Alex Otti

“Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. Then the Lord said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said.” (Deuteronomy 34: 1-5)
The biblical quote above aptly describes the events that took place a few days ago in Bayelsa State. This story starts with the murmuring and complaints of the children of Israel against Moses and his brother Aaron, over the fact that they could not find water for them to drink, not to talk of their livestock. They voiced their regret over setting out on the journey to die in the wilderness. When Moses and Aaron went to seek God’s face in a bid to solve the problem, He instructed them to speak to the rock to produce water. In a rage of anger and frustration, Moses rebuked the people calling them rebels. Instead of speaking to the rock as he was commanded, he hit it twice with his rod. The rock still brought out water for the children of Israel. God was unhappy with the duo and pronounced a punishment on them. They would not set foot on the promised land!Otti Aaron died shortly after while Moses continued to lead the people towards the promised land. Just when the land was in sight, God ensured that he saw the land with his eyes but kept to His promise that he would not set foot on the land. His life was taken after he was shown the city. This is a pathetic fate, indeed, but one which has been the lot of many personalities in history!
David Lyon could be regarded as the latest of modern-day individuals who have suffered the fate that befell Moses in biblical times. He was the candidate of the APC in the last gubernatorial elections held in Bayelsa state, on November 16, 2019. He, indeed, won the election over his closest rival, Senator Duoye Diri of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His landmark victory was the first time any other party, other than the PDP, was wining the governorship elections in Bayelsa since the advent of the Third Republic. The primaries of the PDP divided the party sharply. The former governor had insisted on giving the ticket to Sen. Diri, who is said to be his cousin. He was said to himself have an eye on taking over, on the expiration of his governorship tenor, the senatorial seat that was, at that time, occupied by Sen Diri. Other leading political figures in the state, including the former President, Goodluck Jonathan, reportedly preferred other candidates. Having finally emerged as the candidate of the party, Senator Diri had the arduous task of overcoming fierce opposition which had gone into alliance in support of his APC rival. He stood little chance and was roundly defeated at the polls. While all this was going on, many people did not know that there was a pre-election matter, which Senator Diri had instituted at the High Court, challenging the legality of the APC Deputy Governorship candidate, Sen. Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo on grounds that he submitted forged documents while registering for the election. The High Court agreed with Sen. Diri and disqualified Sen. Eremienyo who immediately proceeded to the Court of Appeal. The appeal Court upturned the verdict of the lower court and cleared the APC candidate, a few days before the election. PDP proceeded to the Supreme Court which gave judgement on February 13, against the APC Deputy Governor-elect, and proceeded to also nullify the candidature of the Governor-elect also, declaring that their joint ticket was tainted by the said forgery. INEC was instructed to withdraw the Certificate of Return from the APC and give it to the candidate in the polls with the next highest votes and that satisfied the constitutional spread, which was Sen. Diri of the PDP.
Bear in mind that the Supreme Court decision was announced just 24 hours before the swearing in ceremony of David Lyon as Governor. It was very painful to watch videos of David Lyon rehearsing for the impending Swearing In Ceremony, taking salutes and riding in the ceremonial vehicle, in preparation for an inauguration that was never going to happen. By the next day, someone else who did not do any rehearsals and who in all probability might not have known he would be governor, was sworn in.
It is not our purpose here to question the propriety or lack thereof, of the Supreme Court pronouncement since we are not “learned” and would not be in the position to subject the verdict to legal scrutiny. There are, however, a few things that we do not need to be ‘learned’ before we can analyse them. Our objective here is to examine those issues that have arisen from the saga. The first is the matter of fairness. Is it fair for the sins of one person to be visited on another? We know someone would refer us to the issue of joint ticket and some sections in the 1999 constitution. We have heard that argument several times but there is still a lot that needs to be considered. Our concern is that in the past, particularly during the 2015 gubernatorial elections in Kogi State, Prince Abubakar Audu died in the middle of the exercise and his Party was permitted to replace him. Since the ticket was joint, why did his Deputy not step in to complete the election? References have also been made to a precedent in Bauchi state where a Deputy Governor was disqualified and fresh elections were ordered by the Court. Legal experts have, however, argued that the two cases are not the same. Besides, the verdict was from an Appeal Court and in law, the Supreme Court is not bound by the decisions of lower courts. Whichever way we slice and dice it, this column stands on the widely accepted rule that it is against the law of natural justice for an innocent person to suffer for the sins of another person. In view of this, we hold strongly the view that the electoral act needs a comprehensive reform. The issue should be revisited urgently by the National Assembly. We have also been informed by those who know better that the issue of joint ticket is a constitutional matter. We are told that Section 187 of the 1999 constitution, as amended, ties the fate of a Governor with that of his deputy and that until a candidate nominates his deputy, he cannot be deemed to be properly nominated for an election. As the electoral act is being reviewed, the lawmakers should not forget to amend that section of the constitution to reflect the popularly held view that “the soul that sinneth shall die”. We are aware that it is the job of the political party to screen candidates, but we are also aware that sometimes, due to pressure, either of time or the interest of other political bigwigs, parties don’t do a good job of it. Another issue of interest is this, considering that this candidate had run several elections in the past, up to the level of becoming senator, the party would naturally expect that if he was qualified to stand previous elections, it was unlikely that he won’t be qualified for the last election. Just like it is done in the National Assembly, he would simply have been asked to “take a bow and go”. While the party would suffer the consequences, the greatest losers in this unfortunate situation are the electorate whose will as expressed at the ballot box is flung through the window by the judiciary, while those not duly elected by popular ballot are imposed on the people through technicality.
Two other matters that are worthy of notice are as follows; first, we have heard lawyers refer to Section 140(2) of the electoral act, which says that a Tribunal or Court should not award victory to someone who came second in an election but should order a fresh election. Other lawyers counter that the section refers to post election and not pre-election matters and that “Tribunal or Court”, does not refer to the Supreme Court. What can we say in this matter, since we are not ‘learned’? The second is still on the political parties. We were told in the past that it was the party that won elections and not the candidates. Those who know better tend to disagree on this matter. Some school of thought argue that it is no longer the law as the electoral act had been amended by Section 141 to the effect that no one can be declared a winner in an election in which he did not participate in all its stages. Another school of thought however, points to the nullification of that clause by a Federal High Court judgement which is yet to be challenged, since that judgement was delivered in 2011. In voiding the sections, the judge held that it amounted to legislative tyranny for the judiciary to be told by the legislature, what judgements to give and what not to. We believe that these are still areas that the review of the electoral act should not ignore.
A big elephant in the room which may not have much to do with the matter in focus is the issue of electronic smart card readers. Analysts have accused the Supreme Court of encouraging electoral malpractices and brigandage by its pronouncements on this subject matter. The position of the Supreme Court is that because the electoral act did not specifically mention the use of card readers, the only way to prove over voting; a euphemism for electoral fraud and manipulation, is through the Voters Register. This means that if you choose to write fictitious results, just ensure that the number is not over the number of registered voters. So, it doesn’t matter if someone died before the elections, if the person was in hospital or if the person simply decided not show up on Election Day, once his or her name is on the register, he is assumed to have voted. This position by the apex court seems to embolden election riggers and render the efforts of INEC to sanitise the electoral process, ineffective. What most people have not averted their minds to, is that holding this position simply means that both the elections held by INEC in 2015 and 2019 should be declared void and of no effect. The simple reason is that all the elections were held with the Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) which could only be read by the Smart Card Readers. Anyone who didn’t have a genuine PVC as read by the card reader would not be allowed to vote. As the legislature moves to amend the electoral act, it should not forget this all-important item. We shall go even further to recommend that electronic voting should be introduced instead of just electronic accreditation.
Now, before we conclude, let’s go back to Bayelsa. A key question is whether the sacked Deputy Governor-elect forged documents? Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. One thing that is clear though, according to the judgement, is that there were discrepancies in the names on different certificates he presented, from his First School Leaving Certificate ,to his West Africa School Certificate all the way to his degree certificates. The only name that seemed to remain constant was “Degi” which at some point changed to “Adegi”. Other names that featured were, BIOBRAGHA; BROKUMO;BIOBARAKUMA WANGAWA; WANAGHA, ERKMIENYO; WANAGBE, BIOBAKUMA and EREMIENYO, which he claimed in one of his several affidavits, was a Chieftaincy title. There are obviously some problems here. It is not impossible that the name changes had to do with changes in religion, but that information was not available on the affidavits which by the way tended to contradict each other. Could the certificates be genuine and in which case, it would be the names that should be dealt with? It is only the man that should explain. Of course, in the context of the governance of Bayelsa State, that has become a moot point.
Finally, there is also an issue of conflict of interest that was cited, culminating in the protest at the residence of Justice Mary Odili, the Chairman of the Supreme Court Panel that heard the case. While the issue of occupying Her Lordship’s residence smacks of self-help, we believe that the legal team of Sen. Edegi was rather tardy in dealing with the issues. The protests after the fact were totally unjustified and unnecessary. We were all witnesses to the diligence with which the Atiku team handled its own matter of a similar nature. They protested immediately, the Chairmanship of the Appeal Panel that was going to hear the case at the Appeal Court. Their grouse was that the then Chairman’s husband was an APC Senator. Similarly, the APC team should have rejected the Chairmanship of the panel as the husband of the Chairman is a leader in PDP. The action and protests are just like applying medication to the dead – an exercise in futility.
Our sympathy goes to Mr. David Lyon who worked very hard and secured victory, only for his Deputy to turn around and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Our prediction is that his day shall surely come provided he does not give up.

When shall we get the next alert from our ancestors?

Outside The Box

BY ALEX OTTI; alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

Chinua Achebe was arguably the greatest writer of our time. His works remain evergreen and have been translated into numerous languages across the world. One of his titles that I can never get tired of reading is ‘Things Fall Apart’, the epochal tale of how the near perfect Igbo society was torn apart and its values destroyed by the arrival of the colonialists. One interesting episode he related in the book was about Obiakor, the palm wine tapper who, at some point quit his job, ostensibly after the oracle had advised him to stop climbing palm trees or risk falling off from one and losing his life. Another was about Unoka, the good-for-nothing father of Okonkwo, the hero of the book. He was said to have earlier gone to consult the oracle not too long after his own father had died. The oracle, as the story went, informed Unoka that his dead father wanted him to sacrifice a goat to him. Unoka retorted brusquely and asked the Oracle to find out from his father, who was asking for a goat, whether he ever had a fowl when he was alive.
Nigerians had some time ago, been described as the happiest people in the world. Don’t ask me what parameters were used to arrive at that conclusion, but we all lapped it up and glowed in the attention that came with it. For now, what I know is that we are no longer anywhere close to the leaderboard of that ranking. In fact, if there is a ranking for unhappy people, we may not be too far from the top, just as we rank in many other indices that portray low quality of human existence. Be that as it may, our sense of humour has remained legendary and is even getting more exceptional. Even in the face of our excruciating and deteriorating condition of existence, a Nigerian would always find a way to make light of any situation and get people to laugh. Indeed, the self-deprecating humour of Nigerians has become as creative as that of the Irish. As news broke within the week that the US government was set to return another batch of the Abacha loot, this time $308 million, the social media went agog with all sorts of hilarious comments about the recovery of the loot. The following was one of the more remarkable posts that went viral: “Over twenty years after, one of our ancestors keeps sending us alerts from yonder. Nigeria is such a lucky country to have caring ancestors. Thank God we are not like those wretched African countries whose ancestors keep asking for sacrifices from the living”.
Even though the American government and the government of Jersey got us into an agreement on how the funds would be used to ensure that the repatriated loot was not re-looted, we remain grateful to them for helping the living with the reserves created by one of our remarkable ancestors. The agreement, signed on behalf of Nigeria insists that the funds must be used for infrastructure in clearly identified projects. Specifically, the agreement states that part of the funds would be deployed to the completion of the 127.6 kilometre Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. A portion of it would also go towards the completion of the Second Niger bridge which the Federal Government awarded to Julius Berger at a cost of N206b last year. The scope of work includes the construction of 1.6 kilometer-long bridge, 10.3 kilometre Highway, Owerri interchange and a toll station. This project is expected to be completed in 2022. It is said to be 40% completed at the moment. Finally, the remaining part of the fund will go into funding the Abuja- Kano 375 kilometre highway awarded to Julius Berger in 2017 at a total cost of N155.7b
All these were sounding well until further information came in that all the money was not coming back. Trust them not to do anything for free! To compensate them for helping Nigeria repatriate the looted money, the government of Jersey will retain $5 million in respect of its costs and expense in the recovery of assets, while the US will retain up to $5 million in respect of its costs and expenses, according to the agreement. The emissaries from our departed ancestors don’t come cheap at all!
As if that was not enough, the sum of $18 million was paid into the Royal Court of Jersey pending resolution of a claim by a third party. Besides, there is no evidence that the looted funds that have spent over 20 years in a bank in Jersey attracted any interests whatsoever. We are, however, mindful not to shout too much so as not to annoy the ancestors and the oracle who could in turn keep back the money and ask that we come and offer more sacrifices instead. One good part of the agreement is the appointment of the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), commonly known as the Sovereign Wealth Fund, as the independent administrators of the projects under the funds. There was also the appointment of independent auditors and the establishment of a monitoring team comprising the three governments to ensure that the implementation of the agreements are not in breach.
Of course, we are aware that following the announcement of the agreements, there have been agitations from some local commentators as to the fairness or otherwise of the location of the infrastructure as some regions seem to have been left out. Since we know that there is still the approved budget for the year, and we also know that this money cannot solve all our problems, we have chosen not to pay too much attention to the agitation in this piece. We are also privy to an interview granted by Hamza Mustafa, former personal staff of the late Head Of State to the effect that the recovered money was part of the loot of some subsequent heads of State after Abacha. Our response would be to thank him for disclosing that indeed, he is aware of some other loot by subsequent leaders and since we are interested in recovering all loots, the authorities should get more information and vigorously pursue the newly disclosed funds as we are certain that the funds under discussion came from that benevolent ancestor.
It is very interesting that this repatriation story came exactly one week after our intervention on January 27, calling for a new approach towards raising investible funds in the country. We had insisted that the frenzy towards the attraction of foreign capital for growth in the investment sub sector of the economy may be misplaced.
About the same time, the private sector arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, IFC, announced that Nigeria had been delisted from the top 5 investment destinations in Africa. Of course, there were very good reasons for that and quite frankly, one was surprised to realise that we were still on that list till recently. This is because we had been lacking in most of the criteria required to remain on that list in the last few years. We must all agree that as an economy, we are very slow at carrying out the required reforms. The economy remains palpably fragile as economic growth continues to underperform population growth. Human development indices continue to show declining numbers in several key areas like education, financial inclusion and healthcare delivery. Infrastructural decay continues to scare away investors, particularly the local ones as the cost of doing business continues to soar. Our records in the area of security is anything but encouraging. Even in the area of corruption, we are still seen as doing an abysmally poor job of containing it, despite all the public declarations that we continue to make. Therefore, the question would be: why would an investor consider us as one of the countries that is safe to put his money? The truth is that no discerning analyst will be surprised at the action of the IFC. One question we should ask ourselves is this; if one were not a Nigerian, what would be the compelling reason to come and invest in this country?
While it is not our intention to celebrate our delisting, we believe that the right response should be that we had considered delisting ourselves before the IFC delisted us. I believe that message should not be lost on our policy makers and relevant government agencies. It is instructive that most of the conditions that make the environment conducive to attracting foreign investment are also the conditions that would equally attract local and diaspora investors. We need to make this point so as not to be understood to mean that we should call the bluff of foreign capital and come back and remain the way we are. Doing that will also scare our locals from investing in our economy. The reality, however, is that there are a few conditions that our locals may not make heavy weather of, that foreign capital will not accept.
So, going back to the huge investible funds in the diaspora and the repatriation of looted funds that are kept away abroad, we somehow agree with Mr. Hamza Mustafa to some extent. It is not debatable that sizable funds are kept in non-interest yielding accounts abroad and those funds have been there for several years. We seem to have focused only on repatriating the Abacha loot and we believe strongly that this is necessary. Nevertheless, we also believe that it is imperative to come up with strategies of getting most, if not all, funds in foreign bank accounts back to the country. This was one of the key points we argued a fortnight ago. I think we should listen to the people that had advocated some kind of amnesty for the owners of such funds who had safely hidden them abroad. This is because if it is true that they can continue to hide such funds and deny us their use, then we gain nothing by pretending to operate from a moral high horse while losing the opportunity of getting those funds back here to work for us. Interestingly, most of these people are aware that stealing, indeed looting, has not stopped in this country. The whole process should be set up in a way that no public show is made of such repatriation. It could be a straight and confidential agreement between the state and the individual. Some tax incentives could be an added sweetener to such a deal. For those funds that would go straight to the Central Bank of Nigeria, an attractive interest rate could be worked out for holders of such funds. A window of one year could be created, beyond which, the government could seriously and vigorously pursue those who would not take advantage of the window to bring back their funds. The government should also continue to negotiate to bring back funds like the recent Abacha loot and ensure that these funds are returned at the shortest time possible.
Having addressed funds deposited in foreign accounts, it is also important to focus on domestic capital formation. There are different ways to encourage domestic investment in the economy. The most effective is through economic policy. Economists believe that under normal circumstances, human beings are rational and would act in their self-interest which in turn would positively affect the entire economy. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, just like every other rule. Economic policies that encourage high interest rate regime would encourage saving the money in the bank rather than taking risks like hiding the money under mattresses and cellars. Economic policies that make it possible for people to make money by selling foreign exchange will encourage speculation in the foreign exchange market. In that case you have so many people hawking foreign exchange on the streets.
If the rate of inflation is higher than interest rates, then the rational investor would rather invest the money than save it in the bank and face the prospect of earning negative real interest rates. If the cost of production is escalated by the cost of infrastructure, investment in the local economy would decline. If the level of ignorance is so high, people may take decisions that make no sense at all, simply because they can’t do any better. Like I pointed out earlier, they may start hiding their money under their pillows or digging the ground and burying them. It is in this respect that education becomes very key. There is also what is called moral suasion, where government mounts a vigorous campaign to push an agenda that it believes would produce the desired predetermined results in the economy. It is also the educated or exposed investor that would be able to understand the relationship between what is lacking in the economy and investment.
Having spoken about infrastructural gap, a discerning local player should be thinking of deploying the capital available to him towards closing the gap. In doing that, he makes more money, addresses the productivity problems with his output, creates jobs, improves economic activity and pays tax to government. Even food, for over 200 million people or fractions thereof, is a veritable area where an investor cannot go wrong. Of course, in between there are a lot of needs that can be resolved by local investors. At the top of the pyramid is the more sophisticated area of science and technology. With improved solutions deploying artificial intelligence, robotics, big data and 3D printing, investors that are versatile and well exposed have limitless opportunities. Herein lies the difference between the Aliko Dangotes and the rest of us!

Open Letter To SERACO Nigeria Limited.

The Managing Director,
Setraco Nigeria Limited
Shehu Yar'Adua Way
Abuja

Dear Sir,

Request For The Clarification Of The Role Of SETRACO In The Controversial Faulks Road Contract In Aba, Abia State.

We write on behalf of millions of concerned Abians to seek your reaction/clarifications to a raging issue that bothers on the strategic Faulks Road in Aba, which the Abia state government claimed to have awarded to you.

With available record, we understand that the contract was allegedly awarded to you in June, 2016, which was when the flag-off was also done.

The government also claimed that the 4.6 Kilometre road was awarded to you at a cost of N6.8 Billion Naira.

Shortly after the said flag-off, two things aroused our suspicion about the genuineness of the contract.
One was the outrageous cost of the contract which was and remains unprecedentedly high, and higher than any other contract as far as road construction is concerned in Nigeria.

We went as far as using roads executed in Rivers State, which weren't just solid, but far cheaper than the cost of Faulks Road to prove that the cost of the road contract was outrageous. We intentionally didn't want to use our progressive neighbouring state of Ebonyi where many solid roads have been executed at far cheaper rates in the last few years, because Abia state government has been dismissing the Ebonyi example with ridiculous excuses, which include that Ebonyi has a topography that makes road construction very cheap.
The second reason for our suspicion was the introduction of the name " SETRACO-HEARTLAND" as the construction company handling the job.
Even on the Signboard strategically positioned at Brass Road Junction where the road commenced, what was boldly written was "SETRACO-HEARTLAND"

Abians reacted very angrily concerning the outrageous cost of the road construction as well as the confusion surrounding the real contractors. As usual, we felt a sense of duty, and demanded for clarifications from the government which has not been made up till now.

We decided to pause and watch, and by late 2018, the government and her propagandists celebrated the completion of the road project and opened it to motorists. Very sadly, as we write now, the road has completely collapsed and major parts of it gets heavily flooded whenever it rains.

The most pathetic is that, lives and property of people living around the area are being seriously threatened by flood.

Just a few weeks ago, the Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, appeared on a live radio program, and when faced with embarrassing questions about the collapse of Faulks Road, he specifically accused SETRACO of not doing a good job by not laying pipes at certain areas that would have helped channel flood off the road. He went further to say that he had directed the Contractor to return to site and promised that SETRACO would be working on the road during the Christmas period.

Curiously, since the so called completion of the project, the government no longer refers to "SETRACO-HEARTLAND", but only SETRACO as the contractors.

Also contrary to the firm directive of the governor and assurances, some work just started at the site two days ago following public outcry and criticisms against the government, which gives serious credence to the popular suspicion that something is very wrong somewhere.

We are writing this open letter, for two reasons. One, SETRACO is to a great extent considered a reputable construction company, and thus should ordinarily not be seen to be involved in this kind of destructive sabotage against the suffering masses of Abia state.
Two, the humongous amount alleged to have been spent on the road belongs to Abia people, in a state where some workers are presently being owed more than one year salary arrears, and pensioners owed about two years pension arrears.

There's serious anger in Abia state over perceived massive looting by the government through some phantom projects, and SETRACO had earlier been mentioned as one of the construction companies being used to defraud the state. For example, in a petition read by a member of Abia state House of Assembly, SETRACO and three other construction companies were listed as companies allegedly being used to defraud the state.

We sincerely would not want to hold this negative narrative against SETRACO without first hearing from the company, hence our demand for the following explanations:

1. Was the reconstruction of Faulks Road Aba actually awarded to SETRACO Nigeria Limited?

2. Was the 4.6 Kilometre road awarded at the cost of N6.8 Billion Naira as claimed by Abia State government?

3. Was the job solely undertaken by SETRACO or jointly with any other company?

4. If the first question is in the affirmative, why was the contract so outrageously high, and why did the road collapse so soon after?

5. What assurance of durability is SETRACO giving to Abians on the roads undertaken by it, especially after the Okezie Ikpeazu led government would have exited power given the sad experience with Faulks Road?

Please, kindly note that your cooperation would be very much appreciated, as failure would leave us with no choice but to proceed with our plans of inviting the nation's anti corruption agancies to come in and thoroughly investigate this particular case and other massive financial crimes being committed against Abians, with a view to bringing all culprits to justice.

As we look forward to your response, kindly accept our esteemed assurances.

Ferdinand Ekeoma

Media Assistant To Dr. Alex Otti, OFR.

CC: Hon. Commissioner For Works, Abia State.

Foreign Investment: Forget Sokoto, Target ‘Shokoto

OUTSIDE THE BOX

By Alex Otti; alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” – T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

There is this popular Lagos saying that people have the tendency of looking for opportunities or valuables in Sokoto when in fact, those opportunities exist in ‘shokoto’ also spelt as Sokoto, but pronounced differently. Sokoto is the Capital of Sokoto State in Nigeria which is understood to be very far from Lagos. It is about 980 kilometers away from Lagos and can take a better part of a day’s journey by road depending on the state of the road and the speed of travel. Shokoto (Sokoto), on the other hand is a Yoruba name for trousers or pants as Americans will call it. Literally, the saying describes a situation where you have a solution with you and you are traveling hundreds of miles away looking for same solution. We shall return to this shortly.

It is no longer news that the Nigerian economy is struggling. Amongst all the challenges the economy is facing, is the revenue challenge, or more rightly the cost challenge which continues to outstrip revenue. In the last three years, we have only been able to raise a little over 50% of our annual revenue projections as per our budgets. Without extra- budgetary borrowings, all we would be able to implement is at best, half of the expenditure budget. If this trend continues, the over N10 trillion budget for this year would also only be partially implemented. Matters are not helped by the burgeoning population which continues to put enormous pressure on available resources. Meanwhile, economic growth slowed down alarmingly and now stands at less than 2% per annum. Finding a solution to these intractable challenges has become the preoccupation of experts and those who genuinely care about the economy. There is no doubt that many of our young people are either unemployed or underemployed, with the unemployment rate expected to increase to 33.5% in the course of the year. Youth unemployment figures are even more scary as they are estimated to be over 60%. To put it graphically, about 6 Nigerians drop into the poverty basket every minute. The number of people living below poverty line is chasing 100 million and that amounts to roughly half of the population. It is a no brainer that if the economy attracts more investments, jobs would be created, productivity would increase and the economy would do a lot better. The big question is: where will such needed investment come from? Conventional wisdom has it that the best source of investment is from outside the shores of the country. That is called Foreign Private Investment. Our leaders, in their knee-jerk response to that conventional wisdom, have been trooping out of the country ‘in search of foreign investment’. In fact, some state governors have virtually relocated abroad, in search of foreign investment. It has become a mantra and the circus gets into greater frenzy as the economy slows and the unemployment figure continues to soar. How successful they have been in their international road shows, is a matter beyond the scope of this essay. We, however, will like to interrogate this belief that foreign investment is the panacea for the growth of the economy.

For the purpose of context, it is important to state that there are two types of foreign investment, namely foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment. Foreign Portfolio Investment refers to remittance of funds from abroad into a country for the purpose of purchasing stocks and bonds in the market, most times for speculative purposes. So, it simply involves investing in the financial assets of a target country on a short term basis for the sole purpose of profit. Decisions here are made based on foreign exchange stability amongst a few others. The behavior of foreign portfolio investment has earned it the sobriquet, ‘Hot Money’. It is essentially there when things are good and once there is any sign whatsoever of turbulence, it takes flight! Foreign Direct Investment, on the other hand, refers to the movement of funds from abroad to a local country for the purpose of investing in business assets, again for profit. Here a company, institution or individual moves money to another country to set up business, buy business or expand existing businesses from their home countries. It is axiomatic that this kind of investment is for a longer term and is more likely to create jobs and impact the local economy. A major condition that would encourage foreign direct investment would include political stability, ease of doing business, exchange rate stability and ability to transfer dividends and profit without let nor hindrance.

Usually, Foreign Investment is part of what makes up the foreign reserve of the country. Recently, our foreign reserves have been declining from close to $50 billion to around $38 billion by the end of 2019. The major reason for this is the liquidation of foreign investment. Like we observed earlier, the component of foreign investment that is most affected is the foreign portfolio investment as that is the one that is most liquid. This is the so called, ‘Hot Money’. In spite of its volatility, we seem to continue to push to replace the fleeing foreign investment. We had argued in this column that other than bragging rights, there is just so much of foreign reserves that we are required to keep. Once we have reserves to cover 3 to 6 months of imports, that should suffice, according to economists. We had also argued that holding so much as reserves in the face of inadequate and decaying infrastructure, and mounting debts, makes no sense. We had demonstrated that the interest rate that we receive on our reserves is a little fraction of the interest rate we pay on loans. Based on the above position, we should actually be actively discouraging Foreign Portfolio Investment (Hot Money) in favour of the more stable and longer-term Foreign Direct Investment. At this point it won’t be out of place to ask if we really need foreign investment at all and if we do, how much of it do we need and at what cost?

There is no doubt that in a globalised world, many economies can hardly do without foreign investment, given the economic theories of division of labour, specialisation and trade. There is no country in the world that produces all that it needs and all must therefore depend on others who have comparative advantage in producing what it does not produce and therefore, trade is encouraged. For Nigeria as a developing country, there is also an advantage of new technology, new skills, expansion in capacity and general economic growth that goes with foreign investment. Having said these, it is instructive to note that foreign capital behaves like domestic capital in several ways. It goes to those places where it can make maximum profit. It does not go to places where it feels threatened. It avoids locations that have not prepared themselves to receive it. Preparation may include enabling laws, security, infrastructure and markets. Some of the things not listed here are sloganeering, preaching and representation. Foreign Capital is very smart. In fact, it is smarter than those looking for it. It has a way of decoding lies. It does not need to visit nor does it require you to visit for it to assess your state of preparedness to receive it. With the advent of the information super highway, it accesses relevant information at the speed of light. Foreign Capital is not shy to vote with its feet if it senses danger or if it feels that the host country is about to do something stupid, even if it has to lose money in the process. If it has to take flight, it explains it as cutting its losses. If these are true of Foreign Direct Investment, they are even truer of Foreign Portfolio Investment whose stake is usually smaller and its risk appetite, extremely low.

It is in this light that we believe that it is high time we put on our thinking caps and begin to do things a bit differently. The first thing we should be doing is to aggressively begin to push Domestic Investment. We are known as the largest economy in Africa on the basis of GDP size. When looked at from the more relevant GDP per head, we pale into insignificance in the continent. The major reason for this is that our productivity is abysmally low. The only way to push this up is to improve economic activity. Improving economic activity requires investment in the economy. The best people to invest in a country are its nationals who understand the economy and its risks. Our suggestion is that we must do all that is necessary to encourage locals to invest in the economy. This is the case with the other economies that are doing well. China’s foreign direct investments are led by capital from Chinese who live abroad and desire to invest in the country. The same goes for India, Israel, Korea and so on. A lot of rich Nigerians maintain fat account balances abroad, that earn next to nothing in interest income. When you engage some of these our compatriots in this category, like yours truly had done in the past, you will discover that their major fears are maintaining a store of value for their assets. This is because the foreign currencies, in which they keep their money, are more stable in terms of exchange rates, and there is the ever-present fear of devaluation of the Naira. Obviously, some of the monies were not made legitimately and therefore are kept abroad, away from the prying eyes of the law. And there is a whole lot of such funds out there. What, one may ask, can be done about this? Some analysts and commentators have recommended amnesty to those hiding funds abroad to encourage them to repatriate such funds for local investments. In its publication released towards the end of last year, The Economist wrote that an estimated $582 billion had been stolen from Nigeria’s public treasury since Independence in1960. This humongous figure, if correct, exceeds our GDP. If we can target repatriating just 10% of this figure, our foreign reserve would more than double. So, it makes sense to do all we can to bring such monies and other funds, back into the economy.

There are a lot of Nigerian investors living abroad and/or that have significant investments abroad. It is a sad fact that the system we have chosen for ourselves, has continued to drive our people out of the country. Most of them resident abroad have huge investments out there and do not give a thought about bringing back their money to Nigeria. We need to address their fears and create the necessary environment to attract such investments. I have no doubt that some people will be talking about patriotism and nationalism. Again, investments do not respond to such emotional arguments. We must behave in a way that is attractive to Capital. While we salute a few Nigerians, who continue to invest in the country, we must point out that they are too few to make the required impact. Why do we think that Ogun State born Mr. Bayo Ogunlesi, the acclaimed investment banker and lawyer, whose net worth is put at over $10 billion dollars acquired 3 airports, Gatwick, London City and Edinburgh Airports, all in the United Kingdom? Why wouldn’t he buy the Lagos or Abuja airports, assuming they were up for sale? Of course, there are many other Bayo Ogunlesis scattered all over the globe. Can someone take it up as a duty to engage them and hear from them? Maybe we can learn a thing or two from them.

A major condition for attracting investments is good governance. We must pay serious attention to rule of law, security, infrastructure, healthcare and education amongst other issues. It is only when we can take most of those for granted that we can thump our chest and proclaim that we are open for business. Therefore, the next time your leaders tell you that they are traveling abroad on roadshows and in search of foreign investment, do not forget to advise them that they should abort the trip to Sokoto when what they are looking for is in their ‘Sokoto’.

Press Release

Supremes Court Judgement On Abia Guber: Our Spirit Is High, And Our Resolve, Stronger.

On Wednesday January 8, 2020, the Supreme Court of Nigeria finally resolved issues concerning the 2019 Abia governorship election. Sadly, the court dismissed our appeal mainly on technical grounds that revolved around the Electoral Act, and not on the basis of lack of evidence or inaccuracy of our facts.

In spite of what the Supreme Court says, we remain convinced that Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu and his party did not, and could not have won the 2019 governorship election, especially when he had a disastrous outing in his first term, climax of which was his nationally acclaimed oppression of Abia workers and Pensioners who were being owed 12 months and 22 months arrears respectively as at the time of the election in question, a record that has got worse since after the election.

We were also not surprised that Abians received the judgement with graveyard silence and sorrow while the governor and his allies celebrated the verdict, expectedly.

Even though we do not agree with the Supreme Court which seems to be encouraging impunity and brigandage with its pronouncements, in keeping to our democratic disposition as law abiding citizens, we have accepted the judgement with equanimity, devoid of anger and bitterness. We also urge Abians to accept the temporary setback and remain peaceful and law abiding.

Let’s thank all of you that have kept faith and remained supportive; just like us, you want a much better deal of good governance for our dear state of Abia. You want an Abia you can proudly call your own. May we remind you that sometimes, in disappointments come greater strength, opportunities, and better results, this shall be our case in the end.

Let us restate with every sense of humility, that the struggle to end the leadership mediocrity ravaging Abia State is not about Alex Otti, neither is it Alex Otti's fight against Okezie Ikpeazu, sadly that is the divisive and misleading narrative the Abia political demagogues have tenaciously upheld to deceive the gullible, sow a seed of discord, and perpetually indulge in grand thievery while subjecting the Abia masses to undeserved slavery.

We are convinced that to be a loser, is to accept an unfounded verdict of defeat from your inferiors; we are much better in all facets than those who seek to mock us over our temporary political setbacks. So let's boldly remind them that the greatest losers are those who have exhibited conscientious and conspicuous cruelty against the suffering masses whose happiness should be the top priority of every leader with genuine victory.

We are very impressed by the resilience and doggedness of many bright and progressive Abia youths who have shown candour, character and courage in confronting the incompetent Abia state government through their well thought out selfless opinions, especially on social and electronic media.This gives us the joy and encouragement to continue the push for a better Abia, knowing that there are progressive young men and women with the conscience and character to resist oppression and internal slavery. We shall share our vision together, and build our future together.

As we encourage these young men and women, we want to urge you all to resist the Greek Gift of Peanut and Pittance, as well as their inconsequential appointments that seek to arrest your conscience, shut you up and indirectly render you hopeless. Life doesn't start and end with political appointments, especially one that can't impact on the people.

We have heard Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu call on us to bring our ideas and join him to develop Abia. We would have been very happy if the governor was ready to accept and implement noble ideas, but very sadly, he doesn't, hence his statement was a comical adumbration to hoodwink the gullible into thinking that he is sincerely reaching out and ready to work with those who don’t agree with him. Even before his call, we had been giving pieces of advice every now and again but all we receive in return are insults and name-calling. For instance, we had in the past advised and pleaded with the Ikpeazu led government on issues that bother on the welfare of the people, but on each occasion, we were replied with insults and defamatory attacks laced with executive recklessness and arrogance. We had also advised the governor against mortgaging the future of Abia people by his penchant for local and foreign debts. Again, we were attacked and vilified for speaking up. If Ikpeazu’s understanding of support is the old system of joining them and clapping for them and singing their praises, we are sorry to disappoint him. We are not cut out for sycophancy. We shall never bow to Baal.

Results on ground show that Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu has not shown deep understanding of the economic challenges confronting Abia State, hence his failure to audaciously confront and defeat the fundamental problems retarding development in Abia. Scratching the surface of the Abia problems is like treating an ailment without diagnosis; it would hardly work. The humongous and unresolved salary and pension arrears which fall within elementary demands of governance, is a clear example of the Ikpeazu's calamitous miscalculations.

We want Okezie Ikpeazu to succeed as governor for the sake of the suffering Abia masses, but for Ikpeazu to succeed, he must purge himself of sycophants and retrogressive political termites whose concept of politics revolves around winning an election through brigandage and looting the resources of the people with reckless abandon.

Without sounding immodest, we wish to restate that, our well thought out decision to leave the corporate world and embark on this struggle with Abia like-minds, was not a decision for the ill prepared and the faint-hearted, so those who think we are perturbed by attacks and setbacks, neither understand our character nor the magnitude of our resolve and conviction.

Finally, while calling on our people to support all genuine policies and actions of government, we enjoin Abians to remain faithful, resilient and very supportive in our sincere quest to redeem our state. Our journey may have been delayed, but we are sure of our destination, especially when our spirit remains high, and our resolve stronger than ever. May we once again draw from the famous quote of Winston Churchill thus: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts”.

Thank you fellow citizens of God's Own State.
God bless you.

Signed

Ferdinand Ekeoma
Media Assistant to
Dr. Alex Otti

Otti Felicitates With Abians On New Year, Predicts A New Dawn For Abia State.

The 2019 APGA Governorship Candidate, Dr. Alex Otti OFR has once again felicitated with the good people of Abia state as they mark the 2020 New Year Celebration.

In a release made available to the press, Otti expressesed gratitude to God for protecting Abians thus far, and for granting journey mercies to those who traveled far and near for the Christmas and New Year celebrations.

He described 2020 as one that has great things in store for progressive Abians, and predicted a phenomenal dawn for Abians who have faith in God.

The financial expert once again expressed sadness over the dwindling economic fortunes of majority of Abians, especially Civil Servants and Pensioners who are being tortured by the present Abia state government which has refused to pay several months of their legitimate salaries, allowances and pensions.

Otti therefore reminded all Abians, especially the well informed and the economically well-off that as a state that goes by the sobriquet "God's Own State" it would be a ridiculous irony to keep silent in the face of the ungodly and unpardonable misgovernance that's making mockery of Abia in the comity of states of the federation, and called on all to show the required disapproval to all government actions that seek to impoverish the citizenry and retard development of the state.


Finally, he, on behalf of his family wished Abians a fantastic and hitch-free new year celebration, and prayed God for journey mercies for those who would be returning to their permanent abodes after the celebration.

Signed

Ferdinand Ekeoma
Media Assistant to
Dr. Alex Otti

Addicted to the Sharing Economy
December 23,019.

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI

“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.” – Thomas Sowell

We live in a dynamic world where numerous ideas are constantly being introduced by creative and daring minds. These radical innovations live or die purely on the strength of how they are received by a discriminating society that has the freedom to choose and which votes literally with its wallet. The only sad situation is that for us in Nigeria, much as we claim or believe to be part of that dynamic and progressive world, we often miss the plot. Sometimes, we refuse to adopt the full concepts and corrupt them to suit our narrow selfish interests, or we simply read the script upside down. We shall delve more deeply into this but suffice it to say now that the world is currently experiencing the new wave of innovations brought about by the concept of ‘Sharing Economy’ but here in Nigeria, we are slow in adapting and indeed, we have a totally misguided concept in our ‘sharing’ of resources.


The term “sharing economy” is a relatively new concept that is built around collaborative consumption. A few individuals own goods (and services) while others are privileged to borrow, use, return and pay for them. Instead of allowing resources to lie fallow, they are made available to others who do not own such resources so they can use them when the actual owner does not have a need to use them. From a macroeconomic perspective, more resources in the society are mobilised and put to better use, under the concept of ‘sharing economy’ An example is what is referred to as peer to per (P2P) transactions where users are linked to owners for temporary use of assets when the owner doesn’t have the need to use such assets. P2P lending brings people who have excess funds to those that need to use such funds and make them available for a specified period and interest rate and they are returned to such owners at the expiration of the period. Technology is the main facilitator of this new form of transaction and it is a big threat to banks.

Another example of where technology is being used to disrupt traditional business methods, is in transportation. The introduction of Uber and other companies, modelled along its style, has literally rendered many traditional taxi drivers and transport businesses, redundant. Uber, amazingly, has no cars of its own, but it has become the largest commercial car company in the world.

The Uber model simply provides robust application software that brings car owners directly in touch with riders who pay less than they would ordinarily pay to taxi drivers while such car owners make money from the otherwise idle time of their cars. Uber takes a commission from what riders pay and passes on the balance to the owners of the cars and the tax man. Using a similar strategy, Airbnb puts idle rooms to use by advertising same on its online platform and getting guests who would have used hotels to occupy those rooms at relatively cheaper rates than the hotels. The company makes money by taking a commission from what the guests pay. The owner of the apartment is happy because he has an opportunity to collect rent from rooms that would have been otherwise empty.

As you would have guessed, our interest today is not on this type of sharing economy, but a sad parallel, which has bogged us all down. We intend to discuss the Nigerian sharing mentality, particularly with respect to governments at both national and sub national levels. Since the advent of the oil boom, officials of the various states of the Federation, meet with the Federal Minister of Finance or his designate to share money in a meeting called FAAC. FAAC stands for Federal Accounts Allocation Committee. At every FAAC meeting, the Federal government shares the revenue generated in the previous month to all the tiers of government based on constitutionally arranged formulae. Bear in mind that in contrast, several other countries that experienced the same ‘oil boom’, save their funds for the rainy day. In fact in Norway, almost all revenue from oil is saved in their sovereign wealth fund whose balance today stands at over $1trillion.

This year alone, up to November, FAAC has distributed about N6.85 trillion to all the tiers of government. This averages N623 billion per month and it is what majority of the states rely on to run their expenses and feed the greed of some public officers. A significant chunk of this FAAC is from proceeds of crude oil. The NNPC funds the FAAC account by periodic transfers to the federation account from where it is shared. Ordinarily, this should not be a problem as humans love to share, particularly if it is a largesse. The problem with sharing, however, is when the beneficiaries become dependent on the largesse such that they become lazy and unable to fend for themselves.

The bigger problem is that the beneficiaries become addicted to the largesse that even when something goes wrong and the largesse does not flow like it used to, the addict finds it difficult to adjust his life style and continues to spend as he was spending before, thereby, exposing himself to several risks. The immediate and clear risk is that the addict becomes technically insolvent and may resort to selling its assets or borrowing to meet up with day to day expenses. But for how long can this last? There is a limit to how many assets the addict can sell as he can only sell what he has, except he goes out to convert someone else’s assets. There is also a limit to how much he can borrow because lenders must pay attention to the capacity of the borrower to pay back its loan with interest and the assets put at his disposal in case of default. Yet another danger is the creeping laxity that this addiction breeds.

Because the addict assumes that the largesse would continue to flow, he becomes lazy and may refuse to work hard or work at all. The more the reliance on the largesse the less the need to sit down and think. Even things that he hitherto was an expert in doing become impossible. At first it is seen as something that is beneath him. He becomes a big man over night, but without the proper foundation and orientation. He wakes up in the morning and what is important to him is not how to add value to himself and the society but how to enjoy the good life, party, drink and go back to sleep.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nigerian state of today! Times were, when oil was not a revenue earner in this country. Before oil was discovered, this country was running, many people would argue, more efficiently based on thrift and planning. Many national assets and infrastructure were created and nurtured. The Regions, as we had them then, were in healthy competition with each other to build such infrastructure as, roads, farm settlements, industrial parks, hospitals, universities, banks, and other assets. Many of these have endured till today.

The groundnut pyramid in the Northern Region had nothing to do with oil but for groundnut oil. The only relationship the palm settlements in the Eastern Region had with oil was probably palm oil. The cocoa harvests in Western Nigeria could only be said to be oily after it had been processed to cocoa butter. How about the rubber in the Mid West and some parts of the Eastern Region? When the oil largesse got us addicted, we abandoned all these God-given resources in a manner more crude than the crude in oil.

As if that was not enough, we went on a state creation spree. From 4 regions, we went to 12 states and from there to 19 and then to 36 states. Even as we speak, some people are still clamouring for more states. We also created without any reasonable logic, some 774 local government areas, who by recent law, have become autonomous. All these creations must be administered and such administration must be funded; all through the Centre. This is our own concept of the ‘sharing economy’!

According to a recent report by Budgit, a respected research and policy analysis company, 92% of the 36 states in Nigeria are today unviable. Only four states, namely Lagos, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Kano passed the sustainability test. What this means is that it is only those four states that can raise enough internally generated revenue to fund their recurrent expenditure. So, if the other 32 states were businesses, they would, by now, be up for liquidation or auctioning. According to Budgit “We discovered states, such as Delta, are running huge recurrent expenditure reaching N200 billion. Bayelsa, despite its size and population, has a high recurrent bill of N137 billion, compared to Ebonyi with recurrent bill of N30 billion, Sokoto (N38 billion), Jigawa (N43 billion), Yobe (N35 billion), etc. It is a recurring theme to see states in South-South Nigeria running high recurrent bills, mainly driven by the high revenues earned due to the 13 percent derivation.”

Now that we are faced with these facts what should we be doing differently? The first is that the states should henceforth be run like businesses instead of as charities, as clearly seems to be the case currently. They must be made to cut down on their unjustifiably high cost of operation. This is true of both the federal and the local governments. Any business that does not cover its costs at the minimum, is a candidate for insolvency. So also, we must see and treat governments.

Governments must, as a matter of urgency, sit down and look at how to improve their level of productivity and capacity for internal revenue generation. There are fundamentals that should not be ignored. When a government behaves as if it is doing its citizens a favour by providing basic amenities and infrastructure, that government misses the point completely. Governments at all levels must realise that they are in competition with other governments. The beautiful bride called ‘investments’ only goes to a suitor who is prepared to receive her. Some public officials spend so much money and time in search of investments, instead of creating the necessary environment that will attract investments.

Little do they know that capital has the best information about everywhere. In addition, capital is a ‘coward’ that quickly flees at the first sign of inability to secure appropriate return on investment. With the advent of technology, all information is available at the click of a button. Your road shows may not be too important in making decisions as to where to invest. So, we advise our leaders particularly at state levels to sit down and prepare their states to become an investment destination. Frequent self-serving foreign trips, negatively impacts their recurrent expenditure and makes them more unattractive to investments.

Governments must also make a conscious decision to stop looking up to oil money from FAAC in Abuja and begin to look at other kinds of oil that is within reach in their own backyards. Our land is still very fertile for groundnuts, potatoes, vegetables, tomatoes, rice, palm oil, rubber, cocoa to mention but a few. Solid minerals are also found everywhere in Nigeria, most of them untapped. It is our contention that governments at state and local levels should pay more attention to harnessing all the resources available to them in order to reverse the trend of going cap in hand to share money at Abuja. The era of the ‘feeding bottle mentality’ must stop immediately.

We must not be oblivious of the fact that we may wake up one day to find that oil has dried up or that the world has no need for it anymore. The model that each government chooses to adopt is up to it, but we must advise that governments should take the lead and have the private sector come in either to partner with them in joint venture arrangements or take over completely. There are also places where constituents are blessed with ingenuity in producing and manufacturing consumer goods and generating services for economic value. It is imperative on governments to provide enabling environments for such businesses to do well, so government can raise revenue from such businesses. Like we have always maintained in this column, no government has the right to raise revenue when it has failed to create prosperity for the taxpayers.

Governments must also get their priorities right. Government expenditure must prioritise sectors that can boost the economy and create jobs. Some states are so close to each other that they can collectively share infrastructure and services. Instead of duplicating facilities like airports and stadia, for instance, such could be shared where possible. We are therefore calling for some form of economic integration amongst contiguous states, even if political integration may not immediately seem feasible.

Finally, it is our considered view that the current structure of government is simply unsustainable. We must agree to prune down the number of states and have the few states determine the number of local government areas it wants to have. In like manner, we must also reduce drastically, the number of our legislators to a manageable size and run a very lean and slim but efficient government. The earlier we begin this discussion, the better for us. We may pretend that all is well, but we cannot pretend for too long. The economic realities staring us in the face say otherwise. We have a choice to make between voluntarily reforming the structure of our political economy or waiting for the political economy to force us to do it. From history, the latter is never a palatable experience. The choice is for us to make, and quickly too!

To my readers, may I use this opportunity to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2020. I must also thank you for keeping faith with this column.

Wetin Concern Agbero with Overload?

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI

“Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. … The means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.” Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

A few days ago, I received a call from Aliyu who used to be my security man years ago. Calls from him were not strange as he had maintained contact with me from time to time, even though he no longer worked for me. This time around, Aliyu was to inform me that his second wife had put to bed, a bouncing baby girl. He wanted me to join him in thanking God for the gift of another child. I queried him on why he was apparently breeding like a rabbit as I remembered that a year before, he had made a similar call asking me to thank God for a set of twins from his first wife. When I then wanted to know how many children he had his response shocked me. He said he didn’t know the number. According to him, in their tradition, they didn’t count children as they believe that every child is a gift from God and it would be disrespectful to God to start counting His gifts, freely given. He started lecturing me about people who were praying day in day out for a child and God would not answer them.


Aliyu then insisted that people like him who had the good fortune of receiving God’s blessing almost every year, should be thankful. I tried to explain to him that the country was dealing with population explosion and that he must endeavour to control his unbridled procreation tendencies, at least for the sake of his children as he shouldn’t bring up children that he was obviously incapable of looking after. He again went spiritual and explained that it was God who took care of children. At some point, when he felt that I was getting too much on his case, he quipped, “Oga, wetin concern agbero with overload?” He, however, did not forget to ask me to send something for his wife and the new baby, which was the real reason for the call.

In its release on “Nigeria’s Economic Update” last week, the World Bank warned that Nigeria would be home to an additional 30 million extremely poor people by 2030, which will make it host a quarter of all extremely poor people in the world, if it failed to reform its economic policies. The major argument of the analysis is that our population growth is outpacing our economic growth. While GDP growth is a miserly 1.9%, our population is growing at over 2.6% (some analysts have put the figure at 3%) per annum. Bringing home the population growth numbers, as contained in the study, in 10 years, Nigeria’s population will increase from 200 million people to no less than 260 million people, if we continue to grow at the current rate .

This would not have been a problem had the economy been growing at a minimum of the same rate. Because our economy is not growing at the rate population is growing, Per Capita Income would continue to go down. The World Bank went further to warn that if we do not do anything, the country may go into another recession similar and probably more severe than the 2016 situation. The Bank believes that for a few reasons, the economy is more fragile now than in 2016. The excess crude account has been depleted so the buffers that the surplus provided would not exist today. Their second reason is that our foreign reserves are severely weakened by the huge presence of what is referred to as ‘hot money’. Hot money is foreign portfolio investment which basically takes advantage of high interest rate regimes in the bond and securities market. Interestingly, this kind of money would vote with its feet once it senses any volatility.

The World Bank went further to state that given that Nigeria has close to 100 million people living below the poverty line of less than $1.90 per day and as had been reported, about 6 people fall into this unfortunate bracket every minute, we must do something significant to arrest the impending crisis. Jobs are not being created at the pace at which we churn out skilled and unskilled people into the labour market. Last year, over 5 million new people entered the labour market while the number of jobs created was a fraction of that number. This situation is exacerbated by the large number of jobs wiped out by the recession of 2016 and 2017 and the very fragile 2018 economy. The Bank acknowledged a few positive cases of job creation in 4 out of the 36 states in 2018, against 2017 where no state created any jobs at all. The states that created some jobs in 2018 include Lagos, Ondo, Enugu and Rivers and we must commend them while admonishing others to learn from them.

In that report just released, the World Bank had some recommendations for Nigeria to consider in order to accelerate growth. The first would be for us to implement reforms to boost tax revenues. While we acknowledge the fact that our tax to GDP ratio is at a lowly 6%, about the lowest in Africa, we hasten to add that the fact that close to 50% of our population are extremely poor, makes this recommendation unenforceable. Expecting to raise reasonable revenue from extremely poor and unemployed people would be like trying to strike water out of a stone. The bank also advocated higher investment in human and physical capital, as well as efforts to improve the quality of spending and reduce barriers to trade and private sector development. Specifically, it recommended gradually eliminating the use of monetary policies that crowd out credit to the private sector. It is our considered opinion that no country can grow without growing human capacity and infrastructure, therefore, we agree with the World Bank on this score.

While we cannot completely discountenance the recommendations of the Word Bank, readers would agree that the situation of our national economy is worrisome and needs to be addressed decisively. The choice we have before us is to formulate immediate, short term and long term solutions to the highlighted constraints. Like most economic challenges, the solutions would include different policy options some of which would be bitter, while the results of some may take some time to be felt. First and foremost, it is important for us to agree that this challenge is real. The numbers may not be perfect, but we must agree on the fundamentals. The story of Aliyu that we started with is to show how even in our attitude, we don’t seem to see that there is a problem. When China realised that her citizens could not continue to procreate the way they were doing, as it had a population explosion on its hands, she came up with the one child policy in 1979. The policy was implemented by ensuring that families that breached it paid huge fines. With strict enforcement, the said policy worked. We must also state that in 2015, China moderated the policy to allow her citizens have up to two children per family. This was sequel to realising that they then had an aging population. Besides, their story had also changed with the massive economic growth that the country had witnessed in the last decade. I believe there is a lot to learn from China. The country realised it had a problem and decided to deal with it head on. When she sensed that the problem was easing off, she relaxed the policy.

We believe that in the case of Nigeria, the time has come for us to introduce some restrictions on the maximum number of children that a family should have to avoid the kind of crises that the World Bank warned us about. We know some people would be concerned about enforcement, should we decide to implement the restriction of births. We may decide to start with rewarding good behaviour rather than punishing bad behaviour. We could work out an incentive for families that comply and expect that it would encourage more compliance. As time goes on we can then introduce penalties for breaking the law or policy. Sometime in the 80s, we toyed with a policy restricting births to 4 per family or was it per woman? I am not sure we were very serious with its implementation at that time. I am also not sure there was any penalty prescribed for non-compliance nor incentive for compliance. We may wish to revisit that policy quickly with a view to reintroducing family planning and birth control in the country. For this to work, the government must get involved in birth control measures and provision of support for families. This simply means increased expenditure on health care delivery. Naturally, there should be added emphasis on education and enlightenment. Investment in health care and education is necessary to improve our Human Development Index (HDI).

HDI is a United Nation’s measurement index for countries based on health, education and standard of living.
Nigeria is currently ranked 157 out of 189 countries; a worrisome rank for a country of our size and population. We occupy the lower rungs of that ladder and the implications are that there will continue to face rising incidence of social, political and economic dislocation. We therefore need to do a lot more to improve our HDI ranking. Like we highlighted earlier, we are caught in a bind as we also require resources which we do not have now to invest in the necessary areas to improve our ranking. That is why we believe we should start with low hanging fruits and it is our belief that population explosion restriction is something that is within our control. Once there is a will to do it, we can always work out the details.

In the medium to long term, there are a few other things that we can do to reduce population growth or improve GDP growth rate or both.
Education is extremely important if we must eradicate or even reduce poverty. Good quality education will not only equip the populace for job creation and skills acquisition, but it will also expose the populace to the ills of unbridled childbirth leading to population explosion. Some of the arguments that Aliyu was canvassing in the story told at the beginning of this essay were founded on the altar of illiteracy and lack of exposure. Enlightened people will hardly want to give birth to children they cannot take care of.

The level of unemployment must be brought to manageable limits. At close to 25% unemployment rate, this becomes a drag on economic growth and a boost to poverty. Deliberate efforts must be made by government to create the enabling environment for businesses to generate jobs for the young people. The enabling environment would include ease of doing business, massive investment in infrastructure, tax and tariff policies, and to a little extent, government direct involvement in supporting businesses that would generate jobs. At the end of the spectrum would be enduring economic policies that would lead to sustainable growth. One of such policies would be genuine diversification of the economy. A major problem we have had is the mono product nature of our economy, such that with shocks in the oil market, the economy quickly goes into a panic mode. We must also continue the drive towards reducing our dependence on imports while we encourage local production. This also has the added advantage of creating jobs and reducing pressure on the foreign exchange market and supporting local currency stability.

While pursuing the long-term solutions, we cannot run away from deliberate actions aimed at controlling our population and reducing the number of our compatriots living below the poverty line. We are sure overloading this bus and cannot afford to behave like conductors who don’t care. It is time to begin to care like drivers. If we do not check our population growth, it will be forced on us by other forces that are totally out of our control. That will be the Malthusian nightmare.

BETWEEN THE OPPRESSOR AND THE OPPRESSEE
November 25, 2019.

Alex Otti
OUTSIDE THE BOX

BY ALEX OTTI

“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Steven Biko (1946-1977)


Steven Biko was a revolutionary whose anti-apartheid struggles helped to abolish the despicable regime. As a student, he was so brilliant that on some occasions, he was promoted over and above his peers. He actually jumped some classes as his teachers realised that he was a young man endowed with very high intelligence quotient. In 1966, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the University Of Natal as a medical student. He was then the leader of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) which had both black and white students as members. He wasn’t very comfortable with the paternalistic approach of white liberal members of NUSAS, not because he couldn’t stand whites. As a matter of fact, he had many white friends. His problem was that the presence of white liberals in the union dampened the fight against white domination. He and other like-minds, therefore started an all black students association, called the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) in 1968. The movement campaigned for an end to apartheid and the enthronement of democracy. Biko fought for racial equality between the black and whites and popularised the slogan “Black is Beautiful”. The year 1972, saw the formation of the Black People’s Convention (BPC), to promote black consciousness amongst South Africans. This union became so effective that the minority rulers of South Africa took notice and started a counter offensive. On many occasions, Steve Biko was harassed, intimidated and arrested on trumped up charges of subversion and attempted mutiny . In 1977, he defied the restraining order placed on him by the authorities and travelled to Cape Town from his detention camp in King Williams town.

He was promptly arrested as he made his way back on August 18, 1977 by the South Africa security forces who had earlier laid ambush for him. He was shackled hands and legs and mercilessly beaten by the police. He sustained head injuries, but was denied access to immediate medical attention. After a massive outcry and pressure on the apartheid regime, the police decided to take him to a prison hospital. On September 11, 1977, he was thrown into the open back of a Land Rover truck, naked and shackled and driven about 1,190 km (740miles) to a hospital in Pretoria. A day later, on September 12, 1977, he died as a result of the injuries sustained in the hands of South African security forces. Contrary to the expectation of his white oppressors, he became even more famous in death. Many people who even though were concerned about the apartheid regime, knew very little about Steven Biko until his death; an event that led to serious uproar around the world, with many calling for an end to the South African apartheid regime. His funeral was like a carnival, attracting over twenty thousand people from across the world. Amongst many of his popular quotes is that the oppressor needs to manipulate the mind of the oppressed to succeed. How does the Oppressor do this? Another philosopher, John Henrik Clark (1915-1998) provides an answer. According to him, “to hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.”

Dr. James Kayode Fayemi is a good man. He is the governor of Ekiti State as well as the current Chairman of Nigerian Governors Forum. In the tradition of full disclosure of this column, let me state that Dr. Fayemi is my very good friend and we relate like brothers. It is a relationship that has been on for close to 25 years. In fact, he used to be one of us in the struggle for the emancipation of the masses until he committed “class suicide” and left the struggle for a few of us to continue, or better still, he decided to fight from within. He ran an election in 2010 against an incumbent Ayo Fayose and defeated him. In 2014, after his first term, Fayose showed up again and using the “stomach infrastructure” strategy and what is now known as “federal might” Fayose prevailed against him and completed his second term last year. Fayose’s attempt to install a successor hit a brick wall as Fayemi renewed his bid for his second term and defeated the PDP candidate in a very controversial election. The name calling, the bad blood, the street fights, in addition to Fayose’s drama, made that election stand out in the whole country.

Some Nigerians were, however, stunned when photographs were released last week showing Fayemi attending the wedding of Fayose’s son. To some, that was a great show of magnanimity by Gov. Fayemi. In normal climes, that is how it should be. But the reality is that the clime here is anything but normal. While we commend Fayemi for his large-heartedness, we hasten to add that in spite of the political differences, both of them belong to the same class and any disagreements between them can always be resolved amicably. More on that later.

A few weeks ago, I granted an interview in the Punch Newspapers where I had insisted that there is no fundamental difference between members of the ruling class in Nigeria. I had insisted that there were two classes of people in Nigeria, namely, the rich and the poor. I went further to argue that the promotion of artificial differences was to serve the interest of the ruling class. These differences are promoted in the name of religion, tribe, culture and sometimes, gender. Just like someone once remarked, every day, people from different geography, religion, ethnic group and culture, sit down and decide what is in their interest and also decide how to further those interests by deploying the potent weapon to realise them which is the mind of the oppressed.

Unfortunately, many people, particularly the oppressed fail to understand that the only difference between the oppressor and the oppressed is economic. This was aptly captured in Karl Marx’s great works in ‘Das Kapital’. Beyond the economic factor, every other thing that is sometimes described as fault lines are man-made creations to further the interest of the oppressors. The oppressor would stoke them to achieve his purpose. When it is in the interest of the oppressor to appeal to ethnic sentiments to win votes, he would gladly do so. If it is religion that he feels will work, the oppressor would remember that some people share the same faith with him while others do not. He would stoke religious differences and remind faithfuls that this was their turn while encouraging them to despise the infidels and unbelievers. If it is gender that would work, the oppressor would not hesitate to appeal to that sentiment.

This is used more often by men, but in some instances by women. The interesting thing here is that when men appeal to this sentiment, more women tend to fall for it, even when there are women in the race. It is then you will begin to hear women castigate their fellow women calling them all sorts of names including arrogant, disrespectful, selfish, sloths etc. Many would recall that some women have made efforts to present themselves for elections in areas dominated by female voters but come out with very woeful results, compared with their male counterparts. Why is it that the Sarah Jibrils of this world hardly won elections, even in their wards?

The Oppressors also understand how to manipulate the oppressed using the instrumentality of money. Many times, it is actually the money of the oppressed, commandeered either by force or legitimised by laws made by the oppressors that is used by the latter to hold the oppressed under firm control. Some of the legitimised stealing would include the current practice of huge pension and severance packages for the executive and legislators who finish their tenor of 4 or 8 years. It is only in Nigeria that someone serves for 4 or 8 years and gets to benefit from ridiculously high severance packages and pensions while those who retire after 35 years of service get paltry sums of money as pensions and the sad story is that most of them receive these packages several months and years in arrears. In some cases, the beneficiaries of these packages get recycled either into the legislator from the executive or vice versa and they begin to earn jumbo salaries again while still enjoying pensions as demonstrated recently in the country. How is this ill-gotten wealth deployed to hold down the oppressed? During election seasons, they are deployed to thugs, bribe security agencies, buy the electoral body and most recently, buy votes. In the last election this year, some votes were bought with as low as N1,000 a piece. The oppressed are excited to cast their votes for the candidates that pay them such a paltry sum. Little do they think that this means that the electorate has sold his right for N250 a year and about N20 per month. In buying votes, the oppressors don’t want to know if you are male or female, if you are Muslim or Christian, whether you are Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa or whether you are from the North or from the South. When the price of poor leadership is going to be paid, it will know no creed, religion or gender.

It is mostly the poor that would pay the highest price. It is only when the action is perpetrated by the oppressed that oppressors eventually end up paying some price. That is the case with the present menace of insecurity that has assumed alarming dimension in the country. When bandits strike, when kidnappers are on the prowl, when armed robbers are let loose, when militants get unleashed on the society; their usual targets are not the oppressed. Their targets are the oppressors. Unfortunately, Oppressors all over the world know this, but those in our country either do not know it or pretend not to know. That is why they operate as if it does not matter that close to 50% of our people live below the poverty line. That is why they do not bother that our educational system is collapsing. That is why they are unconcerned that the healthcare delivery system is in shambles. That is why with the alarming level of unemployment they sleep easy. Elsewhere, out of self-interest, the oppressors ensure that the oppressed enjoy a certain level of comfort to prevent them from turning against their oppressors. The question that the oppressed need to answer is this; how come while the oppressors are united in pursing their interests and even wine and dine together when the need arises, the oppressed are on each other’s neck, pursing primordial and disparate interests? I wish some people can wisen up.

Nevertheless, the message that needs to go out to all and sundry is that history is replete with instances where the oppressed have turned on their oppressors with devastating consequences. One very clear example is the French Revolution, which took place 200 years ago. When the aristocrats of France were busy enjoying themselves and not caring a hoot about the plight of the commoners, a revolution was enacted that abolished monarchy and aristocracy in France till date. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia came from failed and exploitative leadership, which led to the emergence of Communism. The world is still reeling from the consequences of these developments. A word is enough for the wise!

TO DORIS AKPOVWA AS A FELLOW OF NAPE

On Thursday, November 21, 2019, Mrs. Doris Akpovwa, née Lawson, was one of the six distinguished petroleum experts admitted to the fellowship of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE). In this male-dominated body, Doris was the only lady so honoured this year. She is a geophysicist of over 30 years standing. She started her career with Ashland Oil, now Addax in 1989 and left 5 years after to join Statoil where she spent 20 years getting to Senior management levels before quitting to start her own business. Doris and I met at the University when she joined my class some 35 years ago at the age of 15. She was easily the youngest in our set and some of us thought she was missing her way. Shortly after, she showed great resilience and intellect, graduating four years after with a degree in geology.

A few years later, we were to become classmates again at the MBA class in the University of Lagos where she also excelled and passed in flying colours. She was not done as she subsequently took time off work to travel to the prestigious Imperial College London and a year later she returned with an MSC in Geosciences. In 2008, Doris secured a British Chevening Fellowship and that saw her proceeding to the University of Reading where she studied Energy Economics. As if all those were not enough, she enrolled and qualified as a Chartered Tax Practitioner. This amazing and brilliant amazon is married to the award-winning publisher Dan Akpovwa and the marriage is blessed with three wonderful children. One must admire her self-effacing and unobtrusive carriage. In spite of her achievements, she has remained a mother, a wife, and most importantly, a human being. She loves working and mentoring children. She also publishes a children’s magazine called “Teeky” and gets involved in a lot of charity work. This column celebrates the amazing Doris Tamunotonye Akpovwa on her achievements and wishes her all the best in her busy and fulfilling life.

Odumegwu Ojukwu's Memorial Lecture Loading

ABIA GUBER APPEAL JUDGEMENT: OUR MISSION IS BEYOND OKEZIE IKPEAZU.

Being Text Of A Press Release Issued On Behalf of Dr. Alex Otti OFR On The Abia Governorship Appeal Court Judgement.

On Saturday, the 17th of November 2019, a Governorship Appeal Court panel sitting in Owerri, Imo State, upheld the very controversial and questionable election of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu as governor of Abia state.
While the Abia atmosphere was expectedly enveloped by another round of sobriety, sadness and sorrow, as a result of the judgement, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu and his men were celebrating in far away Lagos where hundreds of government officials had been flown to, for the reception of yet another deceitful, but mercantilist award used to hoodwink a non-performing government.

For the Ikpeazus, their oppressive and clueless government got yet another judicial imprimatur to consolidate the maladministration that has caused horrendous devastation in Abia state.
True to the same path of ignominy and half smartness like his uncultured and ill-mannered aides who have been abusing and insulting Alex Otti before and after the Appeal Court Judgement, Okezie Ikpeazu hilariously urged Dr. Alex Otti to "Respect the Will of the People" which according to him, the judgement represents.
Yet in another release Ikpeazu also called Alex Otti all kinds of names, and accused him of Pursuing "Inordinate Ambition and wallowing in Self Deceit", describing him as a "Desperate Sore Loser" for daring to pursue his democratic right of presenting himself for election and seeking redress in court. However, Ikpeazu and his Abia political felons of grand foolery, consciously but callously isolated the masses from the issue while dedicating needless energy which should have been channeled to working for the state, against a citizen who has refused to bow to or worship Baal with them.

The government’s aim is to cunningly and dishonestly sell a deceitful narrative of fighting a political battle against Alex Otti, while in the real sense of it, the notorious Ikpeazu-led government is considered a common enemy of the Abia people who have suffered under the most incompetent leadership they have seen since the creation of the state.

It is very important to humbly state here for the records, that Alex Otti has by the grace of God attained a height where the spoils and perks of office cannot be the motivation for the sacrifices he has made so far, and by the special grace of God, he has continued to soar in all facets of human endeavour, and thus does not, and had never considered Okezie Ikpeazu as his opponent, let alone, a foe. It will, therefore help for Ikpeazu to eschew himself and his media agents of the false narrative of seeking office for selfish reasons. Of course, they should know that Abia people are not fools.

The issue of Okezie Ikpeazu defeating Alex Otti is a fallacious, baseless and an amusing misconception of some moribund minds who ignorantly think that Otti can condescend to their level of nothingness by responding to their insults and mischievous distortions aimed at rewriting our history in a way Ikpeazu's grand mediocrity and nationally acclaimed failure in governance would be hidden from intelligent minds.

Even though Alex Otti, and his party respect the judgement of the Appeal court, it is well within our rights to disagree with the learned judges of the Appeal court who dismissed our petition and we so do. We believe that being human, the judges are not perfect and in this particular case, we feel that the course of justice was neither served nor was seen to have been served. In spite of our reservations with the said judgement, we wish to appeal for calm as it is consistent with our character.

You will recall that four years ago, when we won at this same court, our opponents recruited political thugs and renegades to match on the streets and disrupt activities around Abia. We cannot be like them. Let us remind and reassure millions of Abians that, our resolve to arrest the leadership deficiency ravaging Abia state has been emboldened the more, hence the need for you not to be perturbed by the insensitive ranting of the oppressive Abia state government and her agents.

As long as the Okezie Ikpeazu led government has chosen to fail woefully, while exporting falsehood of non existing performance of excellence to the world, we shall keep pushing vigorously and fearlessly until we succeed in extricating our state from the hands of her enemies.

As our team of eminent lawyers thoroughly study the judgement to determine our next line of lawful action, we urge millions of devastated Abians not to be dampened, but to remain strong, resolute and faithful, even as we strive to ensure that the entrenched culture of consistent transfer of barton of leadership mediocrity in Abia is halted and broken for the sake of our suffering people.

Signed

Ferdinand Ekeoma
Media Assistant to Dr. Alex Otti

Conspicuous Consumption of Our Tomorrow,Today

OUTSIDE THE BOX

BY ALEX OTTI

“The phrase “consumer society” complements the description of the present social order as an “industrial society.” Needs are tailored by the mass media to create a public demand for utterly useless commodities, each carefully engineered to deteriorate after a predetermined period of time. The plundering of the human spirit by the marketplace is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.” – Murray Bookchin


“A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, for such a society is a house built upon sand” – Dorothy L. Sayers

The expression ‘nouveau riche’ is a derogatory expression for new money, often in the hands of people that in Nigeria we refer to as ‘Money Miss Road’. In the post-capitalist society we have found ourselves today, conspicuous consumption has become commonplace. With the undue emphasis that the capitalist model of economic growth places on consumption, there is the race to keep consuming so that the wheels of production must continue to roll. Bigger is now better and the ‘throw away’ or ‘disposable’ syndrome has taken centre stage! The new consumption society has created a new set of negative behaviour and sub-cultures that breed societies that have very shallow depth and practically no soul. Materialism has become the mantra of the new elite. It is really depressing to reflect on how much the society has degenerated. In Nigeria, these sub-cultures have created new challenges and with the import-dependent nature of our economy, coupled with high incidence of what is popularly referred to as ‘real effective exchange rate’, that makes foreign made goods cheaper and preferable to locally made ones, we have a major crisis on our hands.

The media scene itself been awash with stories of internet scammers popularly known as “yahoo boys” who have been arrested in recent times. Some were arrested abroad while some others were arrested here in Nigeria. There was the dramatic tale of a foreigner who lives in an upscale apartment in Eko Atlantic area of Victoria Island. Stories have it that the man gave the EFCC a tough time as he hid in the ceiling of his apartment, but eagle-eyed operatives smoked him out and promptly got him arrested. Not long ago, the video of one of the kingpins who plies his nefarious trade out of Dubai went viral. This video shows how the man was arrested by the operatives of the EFCC upon landing in Abuja. In the video, disgusting opulence was on display, exposing very expensive automobiles that included such exotic models as, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari and Mercedes Benz. Add to these, expensive wristwatches costing multi million naira for the kingpin, his wife and his kids. There was reportedly even a Rolex wristwatch for a seven month old child. Not left out were designer wears for the family including designer wears like Gucci, for the little baby. There were also on display several first class tickets for himself and family.

There is no doubt that these people have been “chopping money” like some of my “brothers” would say. Our issue today however, is not whether the men would be found guilty or not as we believe that between the EFCC and the judiciary, they would have their day in court. We are more concerned about the extravagant lifestyle and heavy spending and what the alternatives could be and how the economy could be affected. In Nigeria, the ‘money miss road’ phenomenon has hit the main street. Over the years, many Nigerians have made loads of money on easy street. There is little appreciation of the value of money and with the right kind of connections, it was always easy to make more money. For many of these people who simply rake in money without sweat, they spend like there is no tomorrow and without any consideration for the overwhelming majority of Nigerians who wallow in abject poverty and misery.

In the capitalist system, which Nigeria also practices, it is necessary to consume so that production will continue to take place. However, the truth is that there must be a method to the manner in which such consumption takes place or it will not be a catalyst to economic growth. In fact the Nigerian situation is very unique, because there is such a huge income gap and in the face of all these, there is also a high level of conspicuous consumption. The typical high class Nigerian consumer does not create demand for the goods and services that will stimulate the local economy. Instead, they support foreign economies and even depress demand for local products. Compare these men with some of the richest men the world can boast of who lead a modest and simple life. The last time I checked, the richest man in Africa, name withheld, has no Rolls Royce nor Bentley to his name. He has lived in his modest house in Lagos for several years. His lifestyle has not changed in spite of the continuous improvement in his net worth. He even has no house in the Capital city of Abuja as he believes he does not need one. He, however, will rather invest in expanding his business and diversifying to new business ventures, creating jobs and adding to the productivity of the nation.

Now, let’s look beyond Nigeria and learn how some rich men “chop their money” elsewhere. Warren Buffet is known as one of the most successful investors in the world today. The 88 year old whose fortune is estimated at $88b started investing at the age of 11. Today, he is the third richest man in the world. He lives a frugal lifestyle devoid of big spending and extravagance. He lives in the house he bought in 1958, a modest five bedroom house he bought then for $31,500.00 in Omaha, Nebraska. The house is worth over $652,000.00 today. He drives himself to work in his gold-coloured Cadillac he bought for $44,600.00. Everyday, he wears one of the 20 suits designed for him by his friend Madam Li and delivered free of charge. Despite being one of the largest investors in Apple Inc, he doesn’t use an iPhone. Instead he uses a flip phone, remember the days of the “nought nine nought” which he joked was lent to him by Alexander Graham Bell and he forget to return it. The flip phone, a Samsung phone model SCH-U320 is sold for $20. He spends $3.17, yes, you read that right, just about N1000.00 equivalent for breakfast at MacDonalds everyday. In between the 18 years from 2000 to 2018, Warren Buffet has spent a whopping $46b supporting charitable causes around the world. He has two sons and one daughter who would inherit $2b each upon his passage while the balance of his money will be passed on to charity. He does have a private jet though, just for the convenience of moving around and not necessarily luxury. He employs close to 400,000 people.

From an economic point of view, consumption is encouraged for the economy to grow. Theoretically, it is consumption that gives rise to production. No production would happen if there is no demand for it. Once consumption increases, it is assumed that production would also increase to take care of the increased demand. By so doing, capacity utilisation would increase, jobs would be created, salaries and allowances will go up, which would in turn generate more consumption and create more jobs. As production increases, government revenue will improve through inflows from company, and personal income taxes. Sales and consumption taxes would also boost government revenue. The economy would stabilize and operate optimally. This theory is true to some extent. The underlying assumption is that the economy which had attained full employment also known as equilibrium, had gone into a crisis necessitated by reduction in consumer spending.

Under this assumption, the economy would need some stimulants to improve consumer spending to enable the economy attain equilibrium as quickly as possible. From that point of view, stimulating spending is not necessarily bad. However, it must be noted that this is not a normal situation but a short term corrective action. That is the logic behind quantitative easing, the economic stimulus package of $4.5t implemented by President Barrack Obama from December 2008 which helped pull the US economy out of recession. The action was meant to put money in the hands of consumers to encourage consumption and stabilize interest rates. In the normal cause of events, accumulation of capital is a major action of economic players that would give rise to a stable economy. Note also that capital accumulation should not be for the sake of it or for saving in the banks, but for the creation of economic activities and generation of employment for economic growth. I believe that it is on the basis of this, that the second quote above by Dorthy Sayers becomes very expedient. It even becomes more imperative in an import-dependent economy like Nigeria’s. The questions that need to be answered include what exactly are we consuming? Who makes what we are consuming? How many jobs are created in the consumption economy? Are we not simply exporting jobs and importing poverty into the country? What happens to the local currency as we continue with our current habit of conspicuous consumption? How have we institutionalised our wealth such that we won’t consume today and be consumed tomorrow?

Yours truly cannot pretend to have all the answers nor even relevant answers to the above posers, but we all need to begin to think seriously about these issues if we want an economy that works for us. Such an economic model must have its philosophical basis and also must take into consideration our own peculiarities and circumstances. And we actually don’t want anyone to get us wrong, we are by no means condemning anyone who decides to use his money the way he wishes. It is their right to do so. We are just looking at alternatives to the so called “lifestyle of the rich and famous” that eventually depletes their resources rather than building for tomorrow. Drawing from the lifestyle of the yahoo boy described above, one would notice that neither the cars on which he spent hundreds of millions, nor the wristwatches, designer wears and iPhones adds anything to the economy. None of them is made in the country, or creates jobs within the local economy. None imparts on the domestic economy except by way of putting pressure on the foreign exchange market to pay for the expensive goods coming from abroad. None creates jobs in the local economy and none adds to the GDP of the country. These goods are just to show off and like Bucchin said in the first quote, the sophisticated goods are all carefully engineered to deteriorate after a predetermined period of time. This is referred to in economics as “accelerated obsolescence”. As the consumer is getting used to the equipment, newer ones are released with the owner of the old model feeling that his very expensive equipment has become outdated and will rush to trade in the old model for fractions of the original cost or outrightly junk them for the newer models. In a lot of cases like electronic devices including cell phones, users do not use close to 30% of the functionalities of the devices. Meanwhile, factories are kept open in China, Europe and America creating jobs for such economies as we continue in our unbridled consumption.

It is therefore our considered opinion that those of us who have become wealthy should not focus on spending such wealth on conspicuous consumption, but instead, we should think of how to invest in productive activities in the domestic economy to create jobs, substitute imports with locally made goods, fund research and developments either with the universities or independently, support charity work and generally build a self reliant and economically independent nation, under which we can even make more money for ourselves. We really don’t need all the expensive cars, wristwatches, designer bags and shoes, phones and electronics. We need to think of how to produce them locally and who knows, we may be able to catch up with those we currently import these items from. We must acknowledge the efforts of some of our entrepreneurs who have in spite of all the odds, set up factories and are producing locally and supporting the economy. We, however, need to do more. Just like it is said, practice makes perfect. We are not unaware of the challenges of infrastructure and enabling environment as we had discussed them extensively in this column, but we must encourage our compatriots who have the capacity to seriously consider spending their money differently. We should not let our challenges hold us down.

Finally, the issue of ‘Buy Nigeria’ has once more become a front burner topic in the country. It is our duty to support locally made goods as that is one sure way of engaging more of our people in terms of productivity and pulling them out of poverty. The agricultural and manufacturing sectors of the economy should be the major beneficiaries of this campaign and have the capacity to suck up a lot of our young unemployed population and boosting economic growth beyond the present lackluster figures.

Please Find Out What Your Money Is Doing In The Bank By Reading This Piece From The Financial Expert, Dr. Alex Otti.

What is Your Money Doing in the Bank?
October 28, 2019 2:34 am1

OUTSIDE THE BOX

BY ALEX OTTI

“It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.”– Adam Smith (1723-1790)

There is no better way to illustrate our essay today than through the popular biblical parable of the talents. According to the parable, a certain master, on getting set to make a long trip, decided to give talents (the form of money at the time), to his three servants, each, according to his ability. The first one he gave five talents, the second, two talents and the third, one talent. Off he then went on his journey. The first servant put his five talents to use. He traded with them and made a profit of five additional talents. The second one similarly traded with his and made additional two talents. However, the third one instead, dug the ground and buried the one talent he was given.

The story did not end there. Their master came back from his trip and invited them to give account. The first servant reported that out of the five talents he was given, he had made a profit of five talents. The master was very happy and blessed him. The second servant in like manner reported a profit of two talents on top of the original capital of two talents. He was equally blessed by the master for a job well done. As it is usual with failures, the third servant started with some long stories of how the master was a very hard man who would want to reap where he did not sow. According to him, he did not want to take any risk with his master’s money and therefore buried the talent in a hole. He returned his master’s single talent to him.

Expectedly, the master became very angry with him and tongue-lashed him for lacking in wisdom, questioning that if he could not do any business with his money, instead of burying it, he should at the minimum, have deposited the money in the bank for interest. In his anger, the master asked that the third servant be dispossessed of the money and given to the first servant who had returned 10 talents. Incidentally, that parable is the source of the popular albeit debatable quote thus, “for unto him who has, more shall be given and from him who hasn’t, even the little which he has, shall be taken from him and given to he who has, so that he shall have abundance”

Before going further let me issue a caveat that we are by no means discouraging people from banking their money. On the contrary, we want people to not only bank their money, but ensure that such funds are put to work for them and the larger economy.

In our last intervention penultimate week, we had argued that the Nigerian economy is underperforming when compared to many smaller African economies. Comparing Nigeria’s GDP of around $445b with South Africa’s GDP of $370b and GDP per Capita of $2,300 and $6,300 respectively, we would see that the difference is clear. Again looking at the current budgets of Nigeria and South Africa, with Nigeria’s $34b and South Africa’s $125b and expenditure per head of $170 and $2,155, respectively, there’s no doubt that we are not ‘classmates’, even if we sit in the same class. A simplistic explanation for this would be the difference in population. That is a no-brainer as we know of countries with even larger populations that are doing very well. The major problem is the economic contribution of the population. Assuming we improve the contribution of each of us to match that of South Africa, our GDP could easily be $1.3 trillion. Now, is this possible? The answer is a resounding Yes, but with the proviso that we must begin to do many things differently. Any country dealing with the challenge of low productivity cannot be well positioned in the comity of nations. That is the reality of where we truly are. The only way we can get out of the quagmire is that we take deliberate steps and implement decisions that will increase the tempo of economic activities in the country. We are not unaware of the challenges of infrastructure deficit which has held down a lot of initiatives, but we must also creatively work round those, just like the few successful businesses in our economy have done. Those challenges in themselves can easily become opportunities.

Recently, the Central Bank of Nigeria gave a directive for Deposit Money Banks in the country to improve on their loan-to-deposit ratio to 60%. A month later, the regulator jerked up this minimum target to 65%. The logic behind the directive was to encourage the flow of credit into such sectors as the SMEs, Retail, Mortgage and Consumer Services. To enforce this directive, the Central Bank came up with a penalty of debiting the accounts of defaulting banks by 50% of the shortfall. These sanctions have already been applied on non-compliant banks. We have heard some grumbling from certain quarters about how it is not the job of CBN to force banks to lend and how this action can lead to the creation of bad loans.

We are of the opinion that not only is there nothing new about this directive, the directive is also not out of place. This is because the average loan to deposit ratio between 2005 and 2010 was 74.33%, a clear 10% over the recent minimum limit prescribed by the regulator. Bear in mind that the banks were not compelled to achieve these results in those days. It was not until 2013 that the average loan to deposit ratio in the industry dropped to an abysmal 38%, but since then it has continued to go up. The only difference is that while in the past, individual banks chose their loan to deposit ratios, now they have to comply with a stipulated regulatory minimum. The growth of the economy, is dependent on the availability of funds for investments in the real sector. It is also true that to the extent that there are less risky outlets that guarantee good returns, rational-thinking banks wouldn’t prioritise lending and we believe that is one of the reasons that the CBN is wielding the big stick. More results would be achieved by lowering the monetary policy rate, which is otherwise known as the risk free rate. This would naturally force down the rates on government securities and make them less attractive to banks and ultimately bring down interest rates generally. It is a known fact that some otherwise good businesses cannot survive the high interest rate regime prevalent in today’s market.

I know that someone would ask if I am making these suggestions because I am no longer in the banking industry. I will therefore depart from my tradition of not personalising my initiatives on this column and discuss what took place during the course of my own banking career. We took a decision to lend to the micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSME) and it not only paid off, it also exposed the lie that lending to that sector of the market was prone to high rate of default and losses. At that time, we created credit products that fit into the MSME markets and deployed massive loans to them. We automated most of the processes being that the number of customers in this sector were very high and the amounts were small. This was one of the key success factors as it made for diversification. We found out that most small players were generally honest and when they didn’t pay, it would be more because the business failed and they therefore could not pay. There was a very low incidence of refusal to pay. This was quite unlike our experience with many high profile “businessmen” who would dress up in the morning with beautiful briefcases and beautiful proposals and come to the bank to borrow with the sole intention of not paying back. They were the ones that would be able to hire the best lawyers, take undue advantage of the loopholes in the law and can decide to keep the bank in the court for 10 years or more. By the time the bank would have been thoroughly worn out, it would abandon the case. The small players on the other hand were happy to get assistance from the bank and would want to build a good record to be able to get more assistance from the industry in future. On our part, we reciprocated the goodwill gesture of these smalltime borrowers in any way we could. To strengthen their businesses, we set up clinics that provided assistance in terms of advisory and handholding services. These included workshops focusing on how to keep their books properly, differentiating between personal funds and business funds, choosing appropriate capital structure and hiring the right personnel, as well as using the appropriate technology in their operations. One of the foremost business schools in the country partnered the bank and we were able to provide these services to the customers on a pro bono basis. At the end of the day, we had a large network of MSME customers whose loss rates were relatively minimal. In consequence, that fetched us international recognition and foreign grants and assistance for pioneering the efforts of supporting MSME banking.

The whole essence of this intervention today is to examine ways of improving on the productivity and output of the country and significantly grow our GDP, create jobs, reduce the level of poverty and generally improve physical security in the country. As Albert Einstein, the great physicist and philosopher once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Our sincere opinion is that the funding for some of the initiatives that will help this economy exists in this country. It is just that we are stuck in some of our orthodox approaches that have so far not produced appreciable results. If we are to relate this to our opening paragraph, just like the parable, we seem to have buried our talents and are therefore struggling in virtually every sector of the economy. Looking at the micro, person-to-person level, it is clear that some of our young men and women roaming the streets looking for non-existent white collar jobs, can become entrepreneurs. Believe me, this is not rocket science. Oftentimes, the problem is not lack of funds but instead lack of vision and conviction. Looking around one, so many needs can be identified that can be met easily with products, but the challenge is always about taking the first step, a move that is often lacking because of the fear of failure.

The barriers to entry into making basic products are not that much. Because they are basic, sometimes, the margins can also be small, but with capacity expansion and larger volumes, returns would naturally improve. As we move up the ladder, there are so many of us that keep large deposits in the bank. And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with keeping large balances in one’s deposit accounts. The only issue is what alternative use the funds could have been put to for the benefit of society and the owner of the funds. Again, going back to the parable we started with, note that the master had recommended keeping the talent in the bank for the third servant rather than burying it. That wasn’t the best use for the money, but rather the master’s worst case scenario.

There is a whole lot we can do with the money available to us rather than leaving them idle in the banks. We must ensure that our money does not become lazy. Beyond the low hanging fruit of agriculture are other infrastructural deficit areas. Power is a very big deal in a country generating no more than 5000 megawatts of power for everyone. Recognising the legislative challenges and the huge investment outlays required, there are yawning gaps in the area of renewable energy like solar, wind and bio mass. We believe that where to invest funds in a low productivity and densely populated country like Nigeria should not be a challenge.

While encouraging everyone who has some funds to boldly channel their money in the most productive activities to create momentum in the economy, we call on the banks to also come out stridently to support the growth of the economy by ensuring that the funds deposited with them are put at the disposal of genuine businesses that would create jobs, add value to the economy and reduce social tension in the land. After all, banking is traditionally, all about collecting money from areas of surplus and making it available to areas of need at a rate higher than what the depositors are paid, thereby leaving a margin for the bank. We must sweat our money and let it warm us. We must also ensure that in the end, we all, including banks, customers, business people and so on, grow our talent or it will be taken away from us and given to those who know how to grow theirs.

Chinedu Orji (Ikuku) and the Doomed Voyage of an Enfant Terrible.

By Ferdinand Ekeoma

As partners in the oppression of vulnerable men and women of Abia, as well as unrepentant allies in the brutal destruction of Abia state, the notorious character presiding over the affairs of Abia state House of Assembly as Speaker, Mr. Chinedu Orji (Ajo Ikuku) felt that the futile demonization of Dr. Alex Otti OFR over his recent Press Conference would not be complete if he didn't add his voice to it, thus he deployed his Chief Press Secretary, one Jude Ndukwe to embark on an ill advised bestial mission of defamation of the character of Dr. Alex Otti through a gibberish article captioned "Alex Otti and the Fading Howl of a Dying Fox"

As expected, the said Jude Ndukwe embarked on the imbecilic and tedious exercise of trying to bury truth in a bid to market their odious product of falsehood to unsuspecting members of the public. Sadly, as would be expected, he got trapped in inexplicable confusion caused by lack of capacity and facts to convincingly engage Dr. Otti and defeat the verifiable facts he raised during his Press Conference, thus this Chinedu Orji's so called CPS chose the path of insanity, incivility and nauseating nihilism as a way of responding to Otti's harmless position, and senselessly howled all kinds of defamatory tantrums on Otti, including calling him a "Political Terrorist"

In spite of Chinedu Orji's legendary notoriety in the Abia political circle, we had made it a policy not to look in his direction since he is not the person directly presiding over the affairs of Abia state as governor except when we are provoked to do so, but since this opportunist of a failed system has continuously deployed his Chief Press Secretary to defame Otti's character, because he considers Otti a threat to his alleged satanic 2023 governorship ambition, we shall have no choice but to accept the condescending challenge of joining issues with this dishonorable legislator as a way of unmasking him completely for the world to behold the tragedy that has befallen Abia.
While Alex Otti OFR is known, recognised, respected and celebrated nationally and internationally as a banker and financial expert of note who got to the apogee of his career and set an unblemished record of success through hard work, discipline and scholarly excellence for which he is still given a pride of place in the financial world till today, Chinedu Orji's name oozes out an unfading smell of oppression, suppression, notoriety and thuggery in the political landscape of Abia.

While Abians know Alex Otti's history of humble beginning and understand his unadvertised material wealth as a creation of his career of consistent excellence in business and finance, Chinedu Orji (Ajo Ikuku) was a vicious invader without an address and identity who collaborated with his father during his inglorious regime as governor to ruin, wreck and loot Abia state to the point of insolvency, while causing deaths of innocent workers and pensioners.
It's still the same Chinedu Orji who was in national news for exhibiting the most primitive rascality since the return of democracy when he walked into a supermarket in company of thugs and asked all shoppers to leave for him to shop unhindered; that's the character that wants to paint Alex Otti black.

Just last year, Chinedu Orji's younger brother was apprehended and detained in Abuja by the EFCC while driving a N100 Million worth of Range Rover Sport, while also living in a house where he pays N13 Million annually. It was all over in the news, and the EFCC said that money for the N100 Million SUV and for the said house were stollen from Abia's treasury. Chinedu Orji's brother has no known sources of income; that's the insane kind of stealing they don't want Alex Otti to challenge and expose.

Unlike Alex Otti who is asking critical questions that bother on governance and welfare of the citizens as done even in the most advanced democracies, Chinedu Orji in his infantile fixation is perpetually trapped in the primitive discuss of election and struggle for power, leaving us to ask; what is the use of power without good governance?
Chinedu Orji and his collaborators in a bid to outshine Ikpeazu, think they can cunningly hoodwink discerning Abians by setting up useless committees to investigate institutional leadership failures/atrocities most of which were committed during his father's inglorious regime, when as the defacto governor, he was a terror to the psyche of peace loving Abians.

Unlike Chinedu Orji's father whose naked picture in a shrine while in handcuffs and leg-chains trended many years ago as governor, because he allegedly sold his little soul to satan just to become governor, Alex Otti is a man who had and will always occupy a position no matter how big, through merit and divine endorsement, and when the time is ripe in God's sight, little minds like Chinedu Orji and his misguided thugs won't stop it.

If Abia wasn't a mediocre fiefdom of classlessness where medieval clowns want to perpetually remain champions amid genuflection and ovation from some hunger ravaged ass lickers , would a character like Chinedu Orji attempt such a ridiculous assessment of Alex Otti's faultless and success filled reign in the bank?

Since Chinedu Orji has garnered enough courage to test the microphone in Umuahia and announce his arrival, we shall be happy to play the music beyond the shores of of Abia so that Nigerians would truly know who is who, while the agencies of the federal government shall at the appropriate time be invited to beam their search light on all in a bid to ascertain who has skeletons in his cupboard.

Ferdinand Ekeoma is
Media Assiastant to
Dr. Alex Otti

Dr. Alex Otti Carried Out A Deep Diognosis On Our 2019 Budget With This Masterpiece Captioned

"Your Revenue is Not Too Low, Your Costs are Too High"

OUTSIDE THE BOX
BY ALEX OTTI

“No man is rich, whose expenditure exceeds his means; and no one is poor whose Incomings exceed his outgoings” Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865)
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” Charles Dickens

For several years now, our annual budgets have consistently not been fully implemented. The main reason for this is that our revenue projections have continued to exceed our actual revenue generation. Even when the budgets are prepared based on realistic estimates, there would always be some unexpected events that throw the projections completely off. For instance, given our dependence on crude oil, the volatility in oil prices is such that projections based on the price ranges at the time of preparing the budgets, quickly become unrealistic. We witnessed this phenomenon in 2014 and 2015 and this was what got the economy spiraling into the crisis that eventually plunged it into a recession. The exceptions where even though revenue projections fail and the budget is fully implemented would be when the government decides to borrow or resort to ways and means to finance the budget. Suffice it to say that each of those courses of action has its undesirable repercussions. Where the government chooses to borrow, it would be left with the burden of paying back the loan some day with its attendant costs. At the inception of the 3rd Republic in 1999, Nigeria had a huge debt overhang. With deft diplomacy and creative financial engineering, we got out of the debt chokehold. It was such a big achievement as it gave the economy the leeway to attract foreign direct investment and funding that were badly needed for infrastructure development. Those good days seem like a century away, and sadly we seem to have arrived at the debt crossroad once again. In fact, the reality is that we seem to be in a bigger debacle this time around! According to latest figures released by the DMO, our national debt profile was put at about $81billion or close to N25trillion, as at the end of the first quarter of this year.

As at 2018, we used 66% of our revenue to service debt, making it the worst year for the country in terms of debt service to revenue ratio since the advent of this regime. Our debt service obligation was 33% in 2015, increasing to 45% and 62% in 2016 and 2017 respectively. If the government decides to use ways and means, a euphemism for printing money, the consequences are even graver. The economy may be subject to distortion and stress as inflation is sure to worsen. Again, the value of the local
currency, relative to other currencies may weaken and/or come under ferocious attack. For those who doubt this scenario, please check with Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

It is yet another budget presentation time. Last week, President Buhari submitted a budget of N10.33 trillion to the National Assembly. The revenue projection of N8.15 trillion has been questioned by many serious minded analysts. The prevailing argument is that, going by the performances of the last three budgets, where revenue targets were never met, it made no sense setting unattainable budget figures. The reality is that in each of the immediate past two years, we had been able to barely meet 50% of the revenue projections. This should mean that, in essence, only 50% of the budget provisions were implemented. Even at that, there is yet another more troubling reality: about 70% of those budget items were for recurrent expenditure. Since such activities are usually categorised as ‘uncontrollable’ in budgeting parlance, they somehow had to be funded. It therefore means that the expenditure head that is always at risk is the Capital Expenditure. For instance, looking at the 2018 budget, only about 50% of the Capital budget, meaning only half of the 30% allotted to capital expenditure, was implemented. This has serious implications for the infrastructural development of the economy. This, in my view, is the main reason why things don’t seem to be moving in the right direction in the economy. Until we realise that no country will develop on the foundation of decayed and inadequate infrastructure, until we agree that businesses would perform sub-optimally without the enabling environment, until we come to terms with the fact that investments can only flow to those locations in the world, that are most prepared to receive them, given the competition amongst geographies, we may continue to remain a weak and underperforming economy, with the inevitable consequences.

Conventional wisdom says that given that there are two sides to a budget, namely, revenue and expenditure; the latter should naturally be dependent on the former. It should logically follow that a lot of attention should be paid to the revenue side of the budget, which should determine the expenditure level. The reality, however, is that when one pays more attention to expenses without adequate arrangements for funding, one is very likely to run into problems like, a debt crisis, inflation, unemployment and the resultant social ills. This is why we have centered our discourse around how to shore up national revenue. Our main traditional revenue source for about half a century now has been crude oil. Given the declining price and volume of oil, and more importantly, the replacement of oil with renewable energy sources, our attention has moved to non-oil sources and taxation. It must however be borne in mind that non-oil sources, particularly natural resources and agriculture, also face slightly similar problems experienced with oil. Besides, their prices are hardly within the control of producers. There is always the prospect of overproduction and a glut inevitably brings down prices significantly. Replacement products or substitutes are also easy to come by given science and technology improvements. These realities will ultimately adversely affect demand and therefore price. The conspiracy theory by importers and consumers has gained currency in the recent times and could affect the revenue of exporting countries.
The foregoing realities leave us with taxes as the major revenue source. In most countries of the world, taxes, form the foundation of state revenues. Again in Nigeria, there are the usual peculiarities and challenges. It can therefore be said that taxes have their limitations. Taxes are only collectible from a thriving economy. Having defined taxes, in a previous column, as government’s share of the prosperity it had created within the economy, it stands to reason that if the economy is not doing well, the moral right to collect taxes would be lost by government. Most poignantly, government cannot expect to collect taxes from ailing or dying businesses and people for as the saying goes, one cannot give what one does not have. From a macroeconomic perspective, when an economy is in a distress, like we are currently experiencing in Nigeria, the right policy to implement is to reduce taxes and put more money in the hands of the people to help jump start the economy. This is because with more money at the disposal of the consumers, it will encourage consumption and therefore production, which would in turn create jobs. Of course, this also holds true for other collections like tariffs, duties and levies.

Given the above scenario and in the light of the challenges facing the country, what should we then be doing? The first thing is to get real and tell ourselves some home truths. Ours is a very small and fragile economy. Look at it this way, Nigeria has arguably 200m people. Our GDP is, circa, $445b, keeping us as the largest country in Africa by absolute GDP size. But then absolute numbers are useless for purposes of analysis. Relating our GDP to our population, we have a GDP per Capita of about $2,300. Compare us with South Africa who with a smaller GDP size of about $370b and population of 58m people has a GDP per Capita of over $6,300. In this same Africa, we have very tiny countries like Mauritius with a GDP size of $15b and a population of 1.3m and GDP per Capita of $11,700. Also, Botswana, with a population of 2.3m people with GDP of $20b, ends up with a GDP per capita of $8,300. The point being made here is that our size does not lie in the absolute GDP figures but in how much each of us gets, were we to share the GDP equally.
This factor above also applies to the national budget. The proposed budget size of N10.33 trillion which translates to about $34b, means that the share that accrues to an average Nigerian, is just about $170 or N52,000 for next year.
Compare this with South Africa’s 2019 budget of $125b with per Capita budget of $2155. This is a humbling realisation! So next time you are comparing yourself with other countries, you should be comparing apples with apples and not with things that look like apples. It is clear that we are a small economy and should stop deceiving ourselves into thinking that we can grow revenue overnight. On the other hand, we have the population, but the population is not as productive and therefore ends up sharing from a very small pot, leaving everyone with a tiny portion. It’s no use pretending to be a big man, when you are in fact, a pauper.
Since growing revenue is obviously not feasible in the short run and since we seem to have hit unsustainable and persistently high levels in terms of debt, the only viable short term option would be to move our attention from the revenue to the cost side. If one cannot grow revenue, one must look at how to plug the leakages. This time around we shall be addressing cost containment and management. A major problem we had earlier identified is that we spend about 70% of our budget on recurrent expenditure, namely, salaries and allowances and other consumables. We can decide that we shall work that number down to no more than 30% in the next couple of years. To achieve that, the quickest and lowest hanging fruit is that we must deliberately reduce the cost of governance. The budget is normally full of excess fat, which we can trim to make it leaner and fitter. The first area that contains unwanted fat is Personnel cost. In the proposed 2020 budget, the estimate for Personnel expenditure is N3.6 trillion. This is about 35% of the entire budget. By the time we drill down, we may find out that we can reduce that significantly without even firing people. Then we go into the budget of the executive arm of government and honestly question everything listed there. The same goes with the legislature and the judiciary. The next item should be lumped under the heading of ‘avoidable expenses’.

The 2019 budget provided for N305b for subsidy on petroleum. We are aware that the figure is more like double this amount. According to the NNPC, we spent over N650b in the one year from April 2018 to March 2019 under what the corporation refers to as “under recovery” which means unappropriated subsidy payments. Some analysts have argued that the number is closer to N1trillion. Whatever the correct figure is, it is instructive that we can save the entire funds spent yearly on fuel subsidy. Nigeria is spending an unsustainable proportion of her revenues on unwarranted and unnecessary subsidies.

The next area where we can cut cost in the area of subsidy is foreign currency. Anytime we sell dollars at rates below the market rates, we are subsidising the Naira, or more factually, some undeserving agents and entities in the society. Restructuring the entire polity will help us save cost in the medium to long term. We may voluntarily do this or wait to be forced by economic forces to do it. The latter is the Malthusian way, which has very adverse consequences for everyone. We had consistently argued in this column that our democracy, as presently packaged and practised, is unsustainable. We had said it before and we shall continue to say so: that we do not need the size of the government we are struggling with presently. We should have a weak centre and even the strengthened component parts should also reduce in size. For instance, we had suggested a much smaller executive with a President and Vice President, and with few ministers. These could be of critical functions, say those of Defence, Finance, and Information.

Then we need to reduce the number of States to about six, in tandem with the current six geo political zones of the country, that everyone is already used to. On the legislature, we should also reduce the number drastically. We had argued in this column in 2017 that we do not need more than 60 people from the six regions in a unicameral National Assembly who would earn sitting allowances only. Our economy cannot afford full time legislators in the number and cost that we are currently carrying. These same functions can be efficiently handled by accomplished and experienced people who wish to serve
the country rather than the present practice where people see the National Assembly as a place where they will retire into and live a lazy life with undeserved privileges. The members should serve on a part time basis. I believe that a lot of savings would come from this action. The same would apply to the State Houses of Assembly. Presently, we have close to 1,000 members of the legislature in the different houses across the states along with their thousands of aides and assistants. We would reduce the houses to just six with the attendant savings. The states and the regions would be made to compete with each other just like it was in the 1963 constitution which worked very well. The states would therefore be required to pay taxes or royalties to the centre, given that powers would have been effectively devolved to them. By the time we have done this, we would have created the enabling environment for productivity for our people and we would begin to see more people engaged and more businesses spring up to now increase the revenue generating potential of the economy.

FOR THE LOVE OF STATE

Being Text of A Press Conference by Dr. Alex Otti, OFR, the 2019 Governorship Candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance in Abia State.

Gentlemen of the Press, I bring you independence anniversary greetings.

Just a few days ago, our country, Nigeria celebrated her 59th Independence Anniversary, an occasion that gave us the opportunity to reflect on our journey so far as an independent nation.

As part of the celebration, I issued a release felicitating with the government and people of Nigeria, and also reminding governments at all levels on the need to prioritise the welfare of ordinary Nigerians in line with what is obtainable in advanced democracies.

Today, I have invited you specifically to once again make a case for good governance in my dear state of Abia; a state abundantly blessed with human and material resources, but lacking in almost all the indices of development, because the state has been very unlucky with leadership.

I have not convened this press conference to advance any selfish personal interest, neither to seek cheap publicity, nor to demonize the government in power; I have no reason to do any of those.
With every sense of humility, I believe that most of you know where I was in the corporate world before I took the audacious decision to step into the ring in a bid to halt the destructive leadership onslaughts on Abia and Abians. Therefore, the essence of this press conference is to once again appeal to well-meaning Abia sons and daughters to carefully and critically examine the unfolding sad developments in Abia state, and consider stepping out of their shells so that we could as brethren come together with sincerity of purpose and selflessly salvage the state which is faced with imminent collapse.

In 2018, I wrote an open letter and organised press conferences during which I called on Abia state government to pay workers and Pensioners their accumulated arrears, and reminded the government in Abia of the importance of salary payments in the economic health of the state, and also highlighted the far reaching consequences of non-payment of salaries and pensions. I knew that the Okezie Ikpeazu led government was incompetent, but shortly before I wrote the said letter and held the press conference, I reviewed the volume of requests I was getting through phone calls and text messages on a daily basis from ordinary men and women from Abia and realised that the astronomical increase in such requests was predicated on the rising poverty levels in the state, which the government is a major propeller.

A serious minded government that is not preoccupied with thoughts of petty politics would have carefully looked at the posers I raised at that time and digested the message even if it didn’t like the messenger. Sadly, political sycophants and social media miscreants were recruited by the government to attack my person. Unfortunately today, their misrule, emboldened by medieval anti democratic arrogance has finally brought a disaster of immense proportions as we feared, to the extent that different institutions of government are presently being shut down, facing strike actions, protests, or merely existing in theory while lying comatose.

While the government takes pictures from God knows where and spends millions on celebrities projecting Abia falsely on Television, radio stations and in the newspapers as one that is experiencing massive infrastructural development and environmental turnaround, residents and visitors alike are confronted by the misfortune of impassable roads and heaps of refuse that make life nasty, brutish and short, like Thomas Hobbes would say.

Also while the present government in Abia state has consistently lied to the world that there is a state government sponsored agricultural revolution in Abia, including the nonexistent Abia rice and Abia mushroom products, the government faced its biggest embarrassment a few days ago during its kangaroo media tour when the picture of the governor commissioning a dirty and substandard two-room local rice mill was released to the world, causing outrage and condemnations. Today, unlike the propaganda promoted by Ikpeazu, there is nothing like Abia rice anywhere. The government knows it and the populace knows this as well. So, what were the lies for?

The same government that would be quick to take credit for the success of our pupils and students in different academic endeavours, has abandoned most academic institutions in Abia to rot away through non-payment of salaries to staff, and failure to develop infrastructure in such institutions, ludicrously branding the staff "non-core" civil servants.

Our academic and health institutions are daily in the news because of one government induced crisis or another, and as I address you here, Abia State Polytechnic has been shut down by angry NLC leadership, because dozens of staff of the institution were sacked by the government while being owed 13 months salary arrears.
Just a few days ago, thousands of students of the institution barricaded major roads around the school as they rained abuses on the government and tore the posters and banners of the governor which were hung by sycophants in every nook and cranny of the institution. The students protest was said to be in solidarity with their oppressed teachers who are victims of government's insincerity.

Abia State College of Education (Technical), Arochukwu (ASCETA) presently looks desolate and deserted, with no signs of serious academic exercise, because staff are being owed 21 months salary arrears.

A few weeks ago, pensioners barricaded the entrance gate of Government House Umuahia to protest the non-payment of their 32 months pension arrears, and two days later, staff of Hospital Management Board (HMB) staged a massive protest against non-payment of their 13 months salary arrears.

Just last month, Sahara Reporters reported the protest carried out by staff of the Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH) over non-payment of their 14 months salary arrears by Abia state government.

Also, a few days ago, Abia State University Uturu (ABSU) was in the news for the wrong reasons, after the acceptance fee payable by new students was increased from N50,000.00 to N150, 000.00. Same increment has been effected on school fees waiting for the new session to commence. These are fees expected to be paid by students, some of whose parents are civil servants and Pensioners owed by the same Abia state government.

The case of Aba is most heartbreaking. The famous Enyimba city occupies a pride of place in the heart of all Abians and many Igbos. After suffering years of neglect in the hands of successive governments in Abia state, many expected that under Ikpeazu, a so called son of the soil, Aba will regain it's lost glory. But what's the situation today?
Aba has deteriorated badly. In short it has been abandoned and betrayed. From a thriving commercial city of old, it has today become worse than an urban ghetto with mountains of refuse, broken roads pockmarked by gullies, craters and potholes! Indeed, Aba has become a monument to the abysmal failures of Ikpeazu. Many businesses and residents who have alternatives have taken flight and the Governor doesn’t seem to care.

All over Abia state, the tragic failings of the Ikpeazu government are self evident. His ineptitude, lack of vision and indifference to the task of governance, are legendary. Obviously his core interest in government appears to be jolly jolly ! He is permanently on a charted flight jetting out of Abia to frolic with friends and associates. Most of the time he is abroad, deceiving those that listen to him that he is in search of foreign investment, while the few existing local ones are closing shop. The drive to better the lot of the masses does not matter to him. Like the Roman general, Nero, he keeps fiddling while his kingdom burns.

Gentlemen of the Press, between the time the present Okezie Ikpeazu led government came on board and today, the state has received over Three hundred and Fifty five Billion Naira (N355 Billion) in Statutory monthly allocations and Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). These funds are aside the bail out funds, Paris Club refunds, ecological funds and loans from Commercial banks taken by this government. Permit me to document the breakdown of these figures.

Year FAAC LG Allocation IGR

2015 (May- Dec) N25.6B N15.42B N9B
2016 N30.7B N20.96B N12.7B
2017 N38.9B N20.96B N14.9B
2018 N55.33B N33.42B N14.84B
2019 (Jan-July) N30.7B N18.98B N8.75B *
Total N181.23B N110.15B N60.19B
GRAND TOTAL N355.29B
*This figure is estimated

These figures are exclusive of the Bailout funds of N14.15B and the 3 tranches of Paris club refund, totaling over N20B. Sadly, Abia doesn't look like a state that has seen twenty percent of the above mentioned funds, forcing one to ask; where do Abia funds go to? We are left with the sad conclusion that these resources meant for the development of the state and empowerment of our people are deployed into frivolities, diverted for self enrichment, shared to some unproductive political allies, and are wasted for the settlement of election rigging thugs and sycophants.
In addition to the above funds, Governor Ikpeazu inherited an external debt profile of $33.79m and Domestic debt of N25b in 2015. Regrettably, this government had ramped up our debt to $100.2m and N63b in external and domestic debt respectively. This means that the state has increased total borrowing from N35b in 2015 to over N100b at the moment if the entire loan was to be expressed in local currency.

Some of you will recall that on the 16th of August 2017, I had organised a similar press conference to raise alarm over the approval granted by the Presidency and the National Assembly to the Ikpeazu government to plunge the state into a fresh loan of $200m from African Development Bank. I had noticed some irregularities in the documentation for that loan and raised a few posers. I had stated that documents sighted by me showed that the National Assembly might have been misled into approving a loan that is different from the one recommended by the Presidency. I had indicated that on May 25, 2017 a Presidential request for $100 million regarding Abia State Rural Access and Mobility Project (RAMP) was sent to the National Assembly, however, on July 18, 2017 the then Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun sent a request for $200 million to the National Assembly in respect of Abia State Integrated Infrastructure Development Project (ASIIDP) which curiously, is exactly the same request that Abia State Government submitted in October 2015. I had gone further to ask
1. How Abia State Rural Access and Mobility Project (RAMP) became Abia State Integrated Infrastructure Development Project (ASIIDP)?
2. How $100 million became to $200 million? And
3. When the request was presented to the Abia State house of assembly which should ordinarily have approved it before it made its way to the National Assembly.
Instead of answering the questions, the Abia State government went up in arms against me, abusing and mudslinging me. But the good news is that my opposition to the loan paid off as the authorities saw merit in my posers and disallowed the loan.

Recently, the state government has been boasting that it was going to secure the $200 million loan that I stopped them from accessing two years ago. In fact, this is one of the major reasons for this Press conference.

At this point I would want to call the attention and reawaken the consciousness of some well to do and respected citizens and elders of Abia state, especially those who have access to the government in Abia to intervene and save this government from itself as well as save the future generation from being mortgaged.

In line with the adage that an elder doesn't stand idly by and watch, while a goat delivers in tethers, I therefore call on Abia elders, senior citizens, royal fathers, captains of industry, serving and former lawmakers at the state and national levels, elder statesmen and political stakeholders across political party lines, human rights activists and opinion leaders to rise to the challenge posed by the current destructive leadership ravaging Abia state. I call on our Clergymen and women to speak out positively. There comes a time when silence is no longer golden. Your subjects are being owed salaries, your members are living in abject poverty and in filth. People are dying prematurely out of hardship and lack of good medical facilities. Businesses are closing down and some are relocating making it difficult for our children to get jobs. Crime is on the increase and life is becoming unbearable. A few has spoken up, but majority are either sitting on the fence or preaching peace. The word of God says in Jeremiah 6:14 “they dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. Peace,Peace, Peace they say, when there is no peace”. Again we are reminded of Ezekiel 13:10 “Because they lead my people astray, saying, Peace, when there is no peace, and because when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall”. My prayer is that this will not be our portion! To all those who can speak but have chosen to be silent, I remind you of the words of Frantz Fanon thus “every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor”

Abia is too big and rich in human and material resources to be surrendered to jesters for destruction on the alter of sectionalism and petty partisanship while vulnerable men and women who look up to us as leaders wallow in daily pain and penury. The truth is that the ordinary people in Abia seem to have been defeated and resigned to fate. They cannot help themselves. All well meaning Abia people should leave their comfort zones and recover their voices so that a genuine conversation on rescuing our state can begin.

I expect the government as usual to call me those names that bear no semblance to who I am and what I stand for, which includes a liar, but I challenge those who have been buying the stories consistently told by Abia state government on tv and in the newspapers to kindly take a trip to Abia to see things for themselves, and confirm who the true liar is.

If previous humble appeals on behalf of suffering workers and dying pensioners could attract hostile reactions, insults and infantile defamatory attacks from the Ikpeazu led government, then I don't see any reason why I should not expect something worse from the sycophants and idle e rats recruited by the government. However, they should know that the resolve to get Abia out of the present mess has become stronger than ever, and no kindergarten tantrums can dampen it. I also wish to state again that this is not political. It is about the love of our state and our people. We must rise to the challenge now as ours is now virtually a failed state.

God bless Abia state
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Signed

Dr. Alex Otti OFR
07/10/2019.

Nigeria At 59: We Must Prioritise The Welfare Of Nigerians-Alex Otti

The 2019 governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti OFR has felicitated with the government and people of Ngeria on the occasion of Nigeria's 59th Independence Anniversary Celebration.

In a release made available to the press, Otti described Nigeria's existence as an independent nation for 59 years now as a great feat, but regretted that the country has been bedeviled by too many socio-political and economic challenges that are presently threatening the peace, unity and development of the nation.

He frowned at a situation where sectional and religious considerations still dominate our national discuss and general engagements, especially in sensitive leadership positions to the extent that mediocrity most times overides meritocracy, at the expense of economic prosperity and general development of the country.

Dr. Otti called on leaders at all levels to take a cue from other nations, especially those countries that once trailed behind Nigeria, but who have through sheer hard work and visionary leadership overtaken Nigeria in all facets of development, so that the country could steer off the storms of political instability and economic underdevelopment, and begin a new process of national rediscovery that could see the welfare of Nigerians become top priority in all leadership considerations.

He congratulated the people of his home state of Abia for their continuous resilience and consistent demand for good governance which has eluded the state for a very long time, and enjoined them not to lose hope or succumb to the oppressive weapons of bad leadership ravaging the state, assuring that consistent progressive push beyond political, religious and sectional platforms is what is required to reclaim and salvage Abia state.

Finally, Dr. Otti assured Abians that he would continue on the progressive path of lending his voice and taking very practical and decisive actions in alliance with well-meaning Abia sons and daughters with the utmost desire to develop the state, improve the welfare of Abians and ensure that God takes his pride of place in God's Own State.

Signed

Ferdinand Ekeoma
Media Assistant to
Dr. Alex Otti

Re: What Does Alex Otti Really Want?

By. Ferdinand Ekeoma

The release with the above caption, written by the Abia State Commissioner for Information, John Okiyi Kalu, was yet another ill timed, ill motivated and hilarious hogwash from Abia State government to celebrate the "tribunal victory" of the monumental tragedy in Government House, called Okezie Ikpeazu.

Smarting from the frivolity of endless partying and frolicking, amidst reckless consumption of alcohol as a hobby, we would have ignored the numerous official insults and defamatory attacks from the jesters in government house since after the judgement, and considered the content of the said release as another entertainment afterthought of their overdose. Unfortunately, the Okezie Ikpeazu led government went overboard with their usual shameful disinformation, distortion and demagogic adumbrations aimed at deceiving the victims of their cruel leadership, while trying to destroy the character, personality, and pro-people disposition of Dr. Alex Otti, OFR, with bitter falsehood.

The puerile piece which was commenced with a biblical quotation, John Chapter 10 verse 10 which says 'The thief (Satan) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full"
Without any doubt, this biblical quote has the propensity to provoke Satan, challenge his superiority and force him to question the audacity of his apostles in Government House Umuahia to overtake him in the act of trying to mock God's Holy Book and indulge in human deceit. How else does one explain a situation whereby the sinful souls who have subdued Abia, suffocated the economy of the state, and sowed seed of monumental destruction that has led to loss of innocent and precious lives of vulnerable citizens, turn back to mock their victims with biblical quotation. Anyway, it is a known fact that Satan himself is an expert in quoting the scriptures.

Among the laughable allegations raised by Okezie Ikpeazu and his boys in the release include, that Dr. Otti wants to punish Abians for refusing to vote for him on two occasions, that Otti is distracting Ikpeazu, that he is disrupting governance in Abia, and that he stopped them from taking a questionable loan of $200 Million from AfDB.

The question is, if Abians didn't vote for Otti, how come they still repose so much hope, confidence and trust in him, while they regard Okezie Ikpeazu as an accidental usurper in government house, who represents a generational tragedy? If Ikpeazu can win elections, why would he resort to rigging and falsification of results of both elections with the active connivance of INEC in Umuahia?

How can Otti be distracting an Okezie Ikpeazu who himself is distraction personified? Which distraction is worse than assembling sycophants to praise you for doing nothing, and insult and attack your opponents and critics for reminding you what your job should be? Who distracted him from paying salaries to Abia workers for close to one year now? Who distracted him from paying pensioners for the past 32 months? Who distracted him from ridding Aba and Umuahia of refuse dumps, such that the horrible pictures we see everyday will be a thing of the past? Did Otti distract him from appointing commissioners, a clear 6 months after he rigged elections and pronounced himself winner in collaboration with his heavily compromised accomplices? Is it Otti that stopped him from putting up infrastructure in the state? Who distracted him from building and modernizing hospitals in Abia. Was it Otti that stopped him from paying any attention to government schools in the state while he takes credit for the performance of Abia students in WAEC and NECO which is as a result of self efforts, private and missionary schools?

Okezie Ikpeazu is bitter and badly complaining that Alex Otti stopped him from taking $200 Million loan from African Development Bank (AfDB). Yes, Alex Otti boldly admits that he took the patriotic step to stop the loan because the loan was tainted with fraudulent intentions. The action was not done in secret like Ikpeazu would want people to believe. Otti organized a well attended press conference and challenged the National Assembly and the former Minister of Finance for approving a fraudulently packaged loan for Ikpeazu. It is not true that Otti visited anyone to stop the loan. He never went to AfDB and had no need to. In fact he had never been to AfDB headquarters as against the claim by Ikpeazu. He simply pointed out that the documents presented by Ikpeazu for the approval of the loan was deliberately distorted with intention to deceive.

The documents were originally prepared by the regime before Ikpeazu’s for a different facility of $100m. Besides, Otti challenged Ikpeazu to show evidence of the State house of Assembly approval, and until now, he has failed to present it. With such weighty disclosures, AfDB had no choice but to refuse to release the funds. Otti has no regrets because Ikpeazu doesn't mean well for Abia people, and doesn't have the capacity and discipline to manage such funds, when he is yet to give good account of the ones he received previously.

Alex Otti made that very altruistic and people-oriented intervention to save the present Abians and our future generations from suffering the pains of a debt that would have gone into private pockets. After all, Ikpeazu is unable to account for other intervention funds like the bailout funds, (which the Finance ministry is now set to recover, even though Ikpeazu thought it was a dash by the Federal government), and tranches of Paris Club refunds, not to talk of the monthly federal allocation, ecological funds and internally generated revenue.

Okezie Ikpeazu once again tried to misrepresent Alex Otti and his record in the bank through his clownish falsehood, sadly he doesn't know that the world has gone digital, and that Alex Otti's record is known, recognised and respected in international financial circles meant for great minds, unlike he, Ikpeazu who still wears the mediocre crown of a local champion, having left Zero record as T.C. Chairman of Obingwa, Coordinator Of Motor Park Touts Collections (ASPIMS), Deputy General Manager of Abia State Environmental Sanitation Agency (ASEPA) and is leaving a disgraceful record as a caged and confused stooge in a dilapidated makeshift quarters called, Government House, Umuahia.

Since the caption of the said article is "What Does Alex Otti Really Want", we are happy to inform Okezie Ikpeazu and his partners in destruction that what Otti wants is the same thing millions of Abians want; good governance.

Otti wants responsible and people oriented leadership in Abia.
Otti wants Ikpeazu to unhook himself from the yoke of man-made mediocrity, discipline himself, imbibe some seriousness in governance and set out for progressive leadership.

Otti wants Ikpeazu to dislodge those timid thugs that have held him and his government hostage, and made him become an object of mockery.
Otti wants Abians across political, religious and sectional lines to see the real and long time tragedy in keeping silent and embracing the thuggish and mediocre standards which Ikpeazu and his allies have foisted on the state.

Alex Otti wants Abians, especially the less informed to realise that the issue at stake goes beyond Alex Otti and Okezie Ikpeazu as individuals, but borders on governance and welfare of suffering Abia masses, whose expectations of good governance are being drastically reduced on a daily basis.

Otti wants Ikpeazu and his aides to stop lying to Abia people and the world. Gone are the days when it is only the government that tells its story. There are different media for information dissemination. While the government and its hirelings tell us that Aba has been fixed, Faulks Road/Ariaria and Port Harcourt Road have benefitted from “rigid pavement technology” and “caterpillar revolution” we know that those places are an eyesore and remain impassable with heaps of refuse. So, Otti wants Ikpeazu to stop disrespecting Abia people by lying to them.

Finally, Alex Otti wants Ikpeazu's sycophants who may have surrendered to servitude due to hunger/greed, and accepted to perpetually do the demeaning and lowlife job of “Otimkpu” (like the author of the release) to realise that they are equal stakeholders who have every right to ask questions and demand for answers concerning the governance of Abia.

He wants them to realise that the "Slave that loves his chain, remains in bondage"

Let me assure you that no matter the level of insults, intimidation, name calling, campaign of calumny and irresponsible attacks, what Alex Otti wants will not change. He will remain consistent in calling out this government for as long as it remains government for a few. He will continue his advocacy in the most civilized and responsible manner, and we hope that Okezie Ikpeazu would grow up to listen, reflect, show remorse, and begin the process of repentance, and once he does this, he would be sure of forgiveness and support from Abians.

However, if he chooses to continue in the same path of bitterness, insults, defamation bullying, impunity and manufacturing of his own facts, he will have no reprieve .

2018: NAMING OUR PUPPY A LION

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI , Email: alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

OUTSIDE THE BOX
By Alex Otti; alex.otti@thisdaylive.com
“The government pretends it is paying us, and we pretend we are working”
– An old Soviet era joke

“Dear Government… I’m going to have a serious talk with you if I ever find anyone to talk to.”


― Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire

Some people have come to see the budget as an annual ritual, some sort of formality which must be done every year. As Shakespeare would put it; it is something ‘full of sound and fury , but signifying nothing’. Most people in this category do not see how they connect with the annual budgets and care less about the numbers, the direction, the approval process, its implementation or lack thereof. You cannot blame such people as they are truly insulated from the budget environment. And it is actually possible to exist in this country from year to year without feeling the impact of the budget as we shall soon demonstrate.


The 2018 budget, in my opinion, is the most controversial budget in recent times. The controversy stems not just from the fact that it took over six months for the National Assembly to approve it, but also that what came out of the National Assembly, according to the Presidency, had little or no semblance to what was sent to it. The Presidency contends that the National Assembly “mutilated” the budget such that the proposal sent on November 7, 2017 which was N8.26 trillion was jerked up by N508 billion by the time it returned to the Presidency. The National Assembly also allegedly cut N347 billion in the allocations for 4,700 projects and introduced 6,403 projects of its own amounting to N578 billion. The Presidency also observed that the National Assembly increased its own budget by N14.5 billion from N125 billion to N139.5 billion. Some other instances cited by the Presidency includes that funds meant for Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Mambilla Power Plant, Second Niger Bridge/Ancillary roads, the East-West Road, Bonny-Bodo Road and Itakpe-Ajaokuta Rail Project were cut by an aggregate sum of N11.5 billion. Again, allocation for the completion of the terminal building for the Enugu Airport was reduced from N2 billion to N500 million while about seventy new road projects found their way into the budget of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, courtesy of the National Assembly, according to the Presidency.

The jury is still out on whether the National Assembly has powers to do what it did with the budget. While some opinions hold that the National Assembly has no powers to alter a document it did not originate, some others argue that the National Assembly should not function as a mere rubber stamp. This school of thought holds that the fact that the document has to be approved by the National Assembly in the first place, makes it imperative that the Assembly can approve, decline, reduce and add figures to the document at will. It is not the intention of this column to wade into that debate here, but it is our belief that the correct position lies somewhere between these two extreme views. We also believe that it would be helpful to seek judicial interpretation of the relevant sections of the law that have to do with this matter. The earlier it is done, the better we can lay it to rest. From a layman’s perspective, if it will cost N1million to build a house and same has been provided for in the budget, any attempt to cut the budget say by 50% simply means that either the house will not be built or it will not be completed, all things being equal. Again, if in the opinion of lawmakers, the house could actually be completed with N500,000.00, it will amount to irresponsibility to pass the budget of N1million just because it was sent by the executive. I am aware that this analogy could be too simplistic as the reality of budget adjustments by the National Assembly could be much more complex than this. Another dilemma that arises from tampering with the budget numbers, particularly increasing overall expenditure like was done in the 2018 budget is that the funding of the budget may become a challenge as the Assembly may not be adequately equipped to ensure that every kobo on the expense side of the budget is provided for on the revenue side. Be that as it may, the major and obviously perennial issue with our budgets is implementation. It is one thing to draw up and approve a budget. It is an entirely different thing to implement it eventually. As we shall see shortly, our budgets are such that even when they are fully implemented, they have little or no impact on ordinary Nigerians.

On June 21, President Buhari signed the 2018 budget into law. The budget size of N9.12 trillion represents a 23.6% increase in the size of the 2017 budget of N7.44 trillion. The budget has an in-built deficit of N1.95 trillion which is just 1.74% of GDP. On the face of it, this should be nothing to lose sleep over, given that according to the Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, we are still the lowest amongst African Nations in terms of deficit to GDP ratio. While this ratio is useful for comparative purposes, we shall continue to contend that measurements like these mask the real issues as absolute GDP numbers say nothing about relative numbers like GDP per Capita which divides the GDP with the number of people in the economy. When this factor is brought into the equation, the conclusions will begin to tilt towards sobering reality.

Out of the deficit, borrowing of N1.643 trillion is envisaged. The borrowing is broken down into domestic debt of N793 billion and foreign component of N849 billion. According to the Debt Management Office, the foreign component would be funded by $2.8 billion, (circa N899 billion) Eurobond issuance within the year which would ramp up our external debt stock from $22 billion as at end of March 2018 to close to $25 billion when this bond would have been successfully issued. While this seems to be the only option open to us to fund the budget at this time, it is pertinent that we focus our attention on the debt service implications of piling up more debts and how it affects the country’s future. Besides, it had always been argued that foreign borrowing is cheaper than domestic borrowing. While this may be true, we should also be mindful that as the US begins to raise her interest rates, all other rates across the world would begin to move in the same direction. This is particularly the case in the Eurobonds market. Of significance also is the foreign exchange risk as local currency depreciation remains an imminent possibility.

About 21% of the budget or N2.2 trillion is set aside for debt service. Since projected total revenue projection is N7.1 trillion, it also means that 31% of revenue will go into debt service within the fiscal year. This is actually a matter that should be of major concern to us. It stands without contradiction that if for some reason, we borrow more than we envisaged to fund the budget, this number will go up. It is a big drag on the budget and a threat to the economy. This speaks more to the issue of debt sustainability rather than the misleading argument about debt to GDP ratio. Like we had argued in the past, you cannot service debt with GDP. Debt can only be serviced with revenues. We must rein in this expense head if we must make progress with our much-desired economic transformation. Tied to this is the issue of recurrent versus capital expenditure. We seem to be stuck on the 70:30 rule. No matter how much we sermonise against this, we end up returning to it. Even though in the budget some progress was made, the actual result remains very minuscule. Capital expenditure of N2.87 trillion is 31.5% of the budget. That leaves recurrent expenditure at 68.5%. The level of infrastructural decay, which by the way, we have lived with for decades now, requires quantum leap adjustment from the 70:30 rule. A cosmetic 1.5% movement in the budget proportion will not cut it. We had argued in previous interventions that according to published numbers, this country requires about $3 trillion in the next 3 decades to address her existing infrastructural deficit. Granted that the whole money may not come from federal budgets, it remains the responsibility of government to fund most of the infrastructural requirements or show the path towards bridging this gap. It goes without saying that this massive challenge cannot be solved by the rather timid approach we had chosen to adopt. The reality, therefore, is that the solution to this intractable problem is not in sight any time soon. So, dilapidated roads, moribund rail system, poor airport facilities, darkness, poor healthcare facilities will remain our companions for a while.

This year’s budget has been described as the largest that the country has passed. The figure of N9.12 trillion appears very large on the face of it. Again, there has not been any budget that was of that magnitude in the history of the country. However, if we factor in inflation at an average rate of 15% for last year, it would mean that the budget, which is nominally 23.6% higher than the 2017 budget would just be about 8% over that of last year. The most important factor that needs to be used to discount the budget, which analysts mostly ignore, is the population growth factor. This brings us back to Per Capita numbers. For instance, the budget estimates that the GDP would grow from N108 trillion in 2017 to N113 trillion ($371 billion) in 2018, representing a 5% growth rate. These numbers do not mean much if they are not related to the population. So with the assumption of N113 trillion GDP for 2018, what it means is that the GDP per head would be N570,000.00 or $1,870.00. Do not forget that according to the National Population Commission, our population has been officially put at 198 million people with an annual growth rate of about 6.5%. So, if we factor in annual population growth, then the so called increase in the budget numbers would disappear. Assuming for some reason, we decide to share the budget for 2018 equally and ask everyone to go and spend his own share, each Nigerian would get a little above N46,000.00 or $150.00. By our own admission of GDP Per Capita of $1,870.00, our position in the global ranking of GDP Per Capita for 2018 would be No. 147 out of 191 countries, just below Côte d’Ivoire at $1880. Herein lies the reason why many Nigerians feel unconcerned about the budget, putting it in its basic simplistic form.

Sometimes, it helps to compare apples with apples and not with oranges. The table below will paint the picture in sharper relief.

From the numbers above, it is clear who is working and who is rather making claims. As we were grappling with these numbers, the World Poverty Clock of the World Data Laboratory in Vienna, Austria, came up with its current publication which surprises no keen analyst of the economy. It stated that Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the largest number of people living in extreme poverty in the world.

According to the World Poverty Clock, over 44% of Nigeria’s population (about 87 million people) live in extreme poverty or more directly, below poverty line of less than $1.90 per day.

India, the country we displaced which used to have about 218 million people living below poverty line, has reduced the number to about 71.4 million people (5.3% of its population), pulling out close to 174 million people out of poverty. No matter what we say and I am sure some of us would like to engage the World Poverty Clock in an argument, recall our recent column titled “ I am Not Overweight, the Scale is Faulty”, India needs not only commendation, but emulation.

This analysis would not be complete if we do not look at two other areas of the budget that concerns the people- Education and Health Care. According to the United Nations Educational and Scientific Commission (UNESCO) the minimum allocation to education for developing countries should be 26% of budget. In the 2018 budget, Education was allotted N542b representing 6% of the budget, meaning a shortfall of 20% of the recommendation. Health got N356b repressing a meager 4% of the budget, a far cry from the recommendation of the Honorable Minister of Health to states to ensure minimum allocation of 15% of budget to the healthcare sector in State budgets. These appalling numbers complicate and exacerbate the already bad situation.

My thought is that we need to sit down, stop making claims, stop boasting and tell ourselves some home truths about the fragility and shallowness of our economy. I believe we have enough honest people who understand these issues. It is only when we have admitted that we have a big problem that we can begin to think of solutions. The way we are going, we may just have a failed economy in our hands. And it can happen sooner than we are willing to admit.

2017: Who Ate Our Christmas Meat?
January 15, 20188258


2
OUTSIDE THE BOX

By Alex Otti; alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

Believe happy New Year is still in order, after all, the year remains very young. Sometimes, I sincerely think that this world is just like a musical chair. One starts the day in the morning and ends with night only for night to give way to another morning and so it continues ad infinitum. Then the days give rise to the week and the month and then the year.



What exactly then, one wonders, is the difference between one day and another? What also, is the difference between one year and another? I’m not sure I know, save for activities which assume differences based on the fact that we have chosen to allocate them to different times and days and weeks and years. If somehow, we choose to do the same things day in day out, then the disparity would become blurred. For some of us particularly from the eastern part of the country, the days heralding the New Year are very significant. It is a period of festivities when many people come home to celebrate with loved ones.

It is a reunion time when people who you would not otherwise see would come home to share with others who are either at home or in other parts of the world. Growing up, it was a time of excitement; a time that we wore new clothes and a time to celebrate with rice and meat. Rice was such a big deal that most of us with humble beginnings looked forward to Christmas and new year celebrations to guarantee rice menu and of course with the meat. Meat occupied so important a place that a story is told of three friends who visited a family in a far place during Christmas. As they arrived, the host served them rice and meat.

Not too long into the lunch, two of the friends who could speak passable English started speaking grammar. You can bet that the grammar would have been lined with mechanical blunders. The third visitor who could not speak English went for one piece of the meat and secured it for himself. He, thereafter, muttered in vernacular, “You people can continue with your grammar, all I know is that our host provided three pieces of meat for us. That means that each of us is entitled to one piece and I have taken mine”.

From an economic perspective, the year 2017 was not an easy one for most Nigerians. It was a year that recorded a lot of dramatic outcomes. The year was the second year of our economic recession. In the second month of the year, the already terribly bashed Naira suffered the greatest humiliation in its life. The Naira depreciated beyond the N500 mark. In fact it briefly touched N520 per dollar in the parallel market. Not too long before, it had exchanged for about N200 per dollar, and the massive crash to N520 was therefore quite historic.

The Central Bank of Nigeria was forced to rise to the occasion to defend the Naira. Most of the measures put in place by the CBN were effective as the foreign exchange market became liquid, demands were met promptly as against the earlier system of rationing and scarcity gave way to surplus. The Naira gradually began to recover and settled somewhere around N365 per dollar.

In the second quarter of 2017, Nigeria officially exited recession with the economy growing by 0.55%. This was the first time the GDP became positive in 6 consecutive quarters. Some of us had predicted that the country would soon get out of recession. We also had pointed out that our exit from recession was not going to translate into better life for our people as the economy remained dangerously poorly structured. Dependence on oil was, and is still prevalent. Attempts made at diversification sadly remained unproductive because we seemed to be focusing on replacing one set of primary commodities with another set which is even more exposed to external shocks that are not within our control.

True to that prediction, a few quarters after the country recovered from recession, life has become more difficult. Unemployment continues to rise from about 14% earlier in the year, to the present 19%. The real situation is actually much worse as the underemployed and unemployed account for over 40% of the population. Youth unemployment data is even scarier! There is hardly any family that does not have someone who is unemployed. Of course, unemployment has a direct relationship with crime and insecurity. That means that the higher the number of unemployed people, the higher the rate of crime and insecurity. Any wonder why the year 2017 and in fact this New Year have been marked by unacceptably very high levels of insecurity in different guises.

Inflation, as measured by the National Bureau of Statistics, has been on a downward spiral in the recent times, even if it remains very high at close to 16%. Recall, however, that inflation was hovering around 19% not too long ago. This has been one big elephant in the room. At these levels, the sufferings and hardship experienced by the people cannot but be excruciating. Poverty levels seem to have been on the increase as 70% of the populace live below poverty line of $1.90 per day.

Many Nigerians chose to relocate from the country through all kind of routes in search of greener pastures. A large number embarked on the very dangerous voyage to Europe through Libya. This has since created a national scandal that has led to the repatriation of hundreds of the migrants from Libya. The number of Nigerian refugees and asylum seekers abroad grew astronomically in 2017. This had direct correlation with the misery index in the country.

The effect of inflation on other economic parameters cannot be overemphasized. For instance, our national budgets must be discounted by the average level of annual inflation figures for any meaningful comparative analysis of one year’s budget against another. The proposed 2018 budget size of N8.6t may look larger than the 2017 budget of N7.44t. But this is in nominal terms. In real terms, the 2018 budget is smaller than that of 2017 because if you discount the budget by the average inflation figure of 16%, the budget size shrinks to N7.2t in 2017 prices, which is over N200b less than the N7.44t of 2017. This is the way inflation affects everyone in the economy. Therefore, in spite of the growth recorded in terms of GDP, Nigerians became poorer and more miserable in 2017. The gap between the haves and the have nots also widened. We can only hope that 2018 would mark a departure from this trend. There is nothing in the horizon, however, to support this hope, this year being an election year where governance may become less of a priority as politicking takes centre stage.

Another issue that dominated economic discourse was the debt profile of the government and its sustainability. As at June 2017, the total debt of both the Federal and State governments denominated both in Naira and Dollars stood at the Dollar equivalent of about $64b. Given the need to bridge infrastructural gap and revenue shortfalls, it did appear that the only option available to government was to borrow. However, the government was confronted with a Catch-22 situation as debt service was consuming a very large chunk of our revenue. By the recent admission of the Debt Management Office (DMO), as at June 2017, we used over 34% of our revenue to service debt. This figure, however, differs from the one put up recently by the World Bank, which stood at about 60%.

Regardless of which figure is correct, the reality is that our debt profile is at the verge of unsustainability in spite of the fact that in terms of Debt to GDP ratio, we were still at a comfortable 20%. The major challenge that the government needs to think through given the present state of things is how to fund the deficit budgets that has become the tradition, without piling up more debts. The 2018 budget provides for a deficit of about N2t which is technically the same amount provided for debt service for the year. It means that the debt stock would increase by another $6.6t if the budget is to be fully implemented. How to safely finance this deficit remains a puzzle.

Again, a lot of state governments were unable to pay salaries in spite of bailout funds and different tranches of Paris Club refunds they received from the Federal Government. Some states were still owing several months of salary areas even as the year came to an end, thereby exposing its workers to serious misery and hardship. As the country struggled, little or no attention was paid to healthcare delivery and education. We had consistently allocated less than 5% of our annual budget to healthcare leading the country to become the 6th lowest country in the world in terms life expectancy which stood at 54years as at last year. Education also suffered the same fate of poor budgetary allocation and the net result was that 40% of adult population was illiterate while over 10million Nigerian children were out of school.

Insecurity and crime assumed an alarming dimension in 2017. Boko Haram that had been “technically defeated” according to the military, refused to surrender as more and more violence was perpetrated by this deadly group. Fulani herdsmen continued to run riot leaving blood in their trail in different towns and villages in the country. The most recent being the new year attacks in Benue and Taraba states that left scores dead. Other forms of crime, including kidnapping, cult wars, armed robbery and ritual killings became recurrent decimals across the country, forcing many communities to live in constant fear.

Nevertheless, it was not all bad news in 2017. The government’s focus on agriculture seemed to have yielded some positive results even if food did not significantly become generally cheaper. A few states made progress with rice production. The same story is also true about yam tubers, cocoa and fish. Oil prices were on a recovery mode even if we did not have a hand in it. Towards the later part of the year, we witnessed oil prices of close to $60 per barrel and as at the time of writing, it had gone further up to about $65 per barrel. Our production and output have also been on the upward trend, averaging over 1.75m barrels per day, owing to the relative peace in the Niger Delta.

The accretion to foreign reserves had also received a great boost in 2017 such that we can see figures of $40b towards the end of the year. Recall that earlier in the year, our foreign reserves had dipped to an all-time low of around $25b which could barely cover 4 months of import. In spite of the good news from the oil and gas sector, the year ended with the return of fuel scarcity in the country. The situation doesn’t seem to have abated even as I write. Matters are not helped by the fact that we import virtually all the petroleum products that we use in the country. Our refineries continue to operate at very low capacity levels. Adequate attention doesn’t seem to have been paid to the issue of local refining of petroleum products.

The year 2018, like I had noted earlier, is going to be a short year considering that political activities will soon dominate the airwaves while governance may be forced to go on vacation as the public sector heads into the political arena. It therefore becomes imperative that the managers of the economy ensure that the economy is insulated from the negative effects of a heated polity. This becomes expedient given the lingering fragility of the economy and the recovery that has not yet been fully consolidated. The government needs to seriously address the issue of infrastructure which is the single biggest factor affecting productivity and restricting growth. If the rail lines are not fixed, if the airports are not upgraded, if the roads remain death traps, if we do not fix power, I’m afraid we would make no progress in our growth journey.

The managers of the economy need to put on their thinking caps and deal with the funding of Infrastructure since this year’s budget did not depart from the practice of allocating a mere 30% of the budget to capital expenditure while recurrent expenditure gulps a whopping 70%. We do not only need to think about how to properly budget for our infrastructural deficits, but also how to raise the required funding for it and how to retire the funding so raised. We must also think of other models that would help actualise the projects and attract private sector funding to this all important area. Efforts at expanding the revenue base of the country are commendable. We, however, need to see more concrete results. In my view, results can only come if we engage more people in economic activities while at the same time improving the productivity of our people. A situation where 4 out of every 10 qualified and willing people do not have anything to do in terms of jobs cannot guarantee optimal productivity. Infrastructure is also very key in expanding the frontiers of productivity.

Again, over 80% of our foreign exchange earnings is still dependent on oil. Everyone agrees this is dangerous given that countries around the world are getting ready to phase out hydrocarbon fired cars in favour of electric cars. This threat is very real and should force us to seriously begin to work on the diversification of our economy.

In the midst of the foregoing, there is every evidence that the Nigerian society has a very worrisome level of income disparity. Economic indicators show that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. The social and political implications of this ugly development are too serious to ignore. It appears that some people have taken more pieces of meat from the proverbial Christmas plate of rice to the complete denial of others. It is important that every segment of the society is given its own piece of Christmas meat or they may be forced to resort to self-help in order to get their share.

In conclusion, I must state that the future will remain bleak if we do not pay attention to some of the issues highlighted above. All the same, welcome to 2018.

An Unhealthy Population is a Sick Nation
November 6, 20171233

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI , Email: alex.otti@thisdaylive.com
OUTSIDE THE BOX

By Alex Otti; alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

“I would like to be realistic to say a few words concerning health delivery system in Nigeria. It is very poor, sorry to say that. I am happy that the MD of Aso Clinic (Dr. Manir) is here. There are lots of constructions going on in that hospital, but there is no single syringe there, what does that mean? Who will use the buildings?”

The above statement made by the President’s wife, was as honest as it was reassuring. Honest, because it was rendered in the no-holds-barred style, typical of Mrs Buhari, and exemplified in her berating of a few people she claimed had hijacked her husband’s presidency and her “Animal Farm” analogy. Though we are still awaiting the eviction of the Hyenas and the Jackals from the kingdom, four months after. She, indeed, hit the bull’s eye with that comment. Reassuring, because it provided some succor to the rest of us that the decay in the healthcare delivery system is not limited to lesser mortals like us. Similar to the soap opera of the yesteryears, it shows that “the rich also cry”. It is helpful because one can also understand why our healthcare delivery system has continued to fail. The First Lady squarely put the blame where it belonged: leadership.

Perhaps, the most important point the First Lady made which may not have been intentional was to provide answers to those of us who had been wondering why her husband had spent a lot of time in the UK on medical vacation. We are not oblivious of Buhari’s campaign promise of ending medical tourism in Nigeria if he became President. Over 2 years after, he has not only failed to end it, he has joined the train. Therefore, Mrs. Buhari’s outburst was very useful in helping us understand why the President preferred London hospitals to the one in Aso Rock. You can say what you want, but the point remains that if Aso Clinic does not have a syringe, it would be an act of suicide for the President to submit himself to that hospital for the treatment of an ostensibly very serious ailment.

It is sad that in most of our discourse, little or no attention is paid to healthcare delivery. Most people focus on the economy, the polity, ethnicity and religion. These may be important but we tend to ignore the more important issue of health. As a result, we keep dealing with avoidable deaths of our people. Life expectancy in Nigeria remains abysmally low at around 54.5years placing us as number 177 out of the 183 nations ranked by the World Health Organization (WHO) as at 2016. Meanwhile, average life expectancy in the world, according to the United Nations is 71.5 years as at the end of 2015. However, beyond the damage that poor healthcare delivery has done directly on the populace, is the vexed issue of capital flight that has been engendered by the rich seeking help elsewhere. Medical tourism has been estimated to cost the country over $1billion annually. This figure was provided by the Honourable Minister of State for Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire at an event in Lagos recently. An investment of $1billion annually would eradicate the need to go elsewhere for medical attention. It is of concern that we spend a large chunk of our foreign exchange earnings on medical care abroad. Related to medical tourism is brain drain. Most of our best qualified healthcare professionals are found in foreign countries to where they migrate, in search of better conditions of work. It has been reported that there are over 3,000 Nigerian medical doctors in the UK and over 5,000 in the US. This is in addition to thousands of others spread elsewhere around the world. Meanwhile, according to the WHO, out of the country’s requirement of about 237,000 medical doctors, we only have about 35,000, leaving a gap of over 200,000. This is a very serious problem that should not be left to address itself as we have so far done. I shall return to this in due course.

The challenges of the healthcare sector can be discussed under four broad headings. There may be a few others that I may not be able to discuss in this column, but the idea is to bring this matter firmly into public consciousness and have many more people begin to interrogate ourselves with a view to finding solutions to the problems. I will now take the challenges in turn.



MEDICAL FUNDING



Just like other sectors like education, health care is grossly underfunded. This did not start today. However, the paucity of funds has assumed more frightening dimensions in recent times. Looking at the federal budgetary allocations to health care, it would not be difficult to understand why there is no traction in this sector and why there may not be any improvements until we change our priorities. In Naira terms, except in 2017, we have continued to allocate less funds to healthcare year after year. In 2014, the allocation to healthcare was N264.5b which represented about 5.6% of the total budget of N4.7t. By the 2015 budget of N5.1t, we allocated a reduced amount of N259.75b to the sector, which was about 5.2% of the total budget. In 2016, healthcare attracted a further reduced amount of N250.06b from a budget size of N6.06t representing 3.73% of the budget. It was only in 2017 that the sector was lucky to attract a larger allocation of N308.4b out of a budget size of 7.44t representing 4.15% of the budget. If these stories appear sad on the surface, then the application of the concept of ‘time value of money’ would make it worse. Applying an average conservative inflation rate of 15% per annum, over the period, would show that the N259.75b in 2015 represents only about N221b in 2014 prices. Similarly, the N250b of 2016 represents N175b in 2014 prices while the N308.46b of 2017 represents N185b in real 2014 prices. These don’t sound attractive, but they are not only real, they are true. If we apply the exchange rate variable into the equation, it would be very clear that what we are dealing with is a massive compression of our healthcare budgets over the years. Exchange rates hovered around N160 per dollar in 2014, N199 in 2015 and early 2016 and N305 later in 2016 until now. So, if we convert the allocations into dollars, we would see that this sector should actually have collapsed by now. So, we must salute those who have managed to keep it alive till this time.


According to the WHO, Nigeria spends only $67 per person on health care per annum. Angola, on the other hand spends over $200, while South Africa spends seven times what Nigeria spends at about $470. The WHO recommends that no less than 15% of the annual budgets of countries should be dedicated to healthcare. A lot of countries are in compliance. In spite of all the hullabaloo of Obama Care and Trump “Careless”, America dedicates over 20% of its huge budget to health care delivery. Iran’s healthcare budget is 18% while China is close to 13% and Turkey, 11% of much larger budgets.

Meanwhile, we are here, struggling with 4 to 5 % of a kindergarten budget.

It is conceded that a larger budget does not necessarily guarantee a better quality healthcare delivery system. We know that budgets do not deliver results. Conversely poor budgets cannot deliver results irrespective intentions. Norway, Switzerland and the United States are the world’s three biggest healthcare spenders –spending $9,715 per person (9.6% of GDP), $9,276 per person (11.5% of GDP), and $9,146 per person (17.1% of GDP) respectively.

But other countries’ health systems are managing to achieve similar or better results for far less. Hong Kong spends $1,716 per person (6% of GDP), Israel $2,599 per person (7.2% of GDP) and Singapore $2,507 (4.6% of GDP). These countries, like Norway and Switzerland, have life expectancy of between 82 and 83 years. By comparison, life expectancy in the US is 79.


MEDICAL STRUCTURE



Going by constitutional provisions, healthcare delivery is divided amongst the three tiers of government viz, local government, state and federal governments. Local governments are responsible for primary healthcare which includes the management of local dispensaries, environmental sanitation and protection and routine immunization.

The State governments look after the secondary healthcare system including the General Hospitals and Health Centres while the Federal Government is in charge of tertiary and referral institutions such as the National Hospital, the Specialist/Teaching Hospitals and the Federal Medical Centers.

We all know that the local dispensaries and community health centers have disappeared. Why won’t they disappear when they are not being funded? They are supposed to be looked after by LGAs. The LGAs themselves are non-existent in majority of the states because many state governors want to be in control of the finances of the LGAs and instead of holding elections for the LGAs, they foist their thugs and cronies as Transitional Council Chairmen, an arrangement which should not last more than 6 months. They renew their tenures after every 6 months in perpetuity. These transitional Chairmen do not have access to the LG allocation and owe their stay in office to the Governor. On receipt of the allocation, the governor gives them some stipend to help them run the LG and keep the rest. It would be a pipe dream to expect that part of the priorities of these Chairmen is healthcare. They know they cannot do it and instead of wasting their time, they face other things. Once salaries of LG staff are paid, (that is, where they are paid) every other thing becomes secondary. Any wonder why the primary healthcare system has completely collapsed.

In essence, the first level of healthcare provision and prevention of diseases cannot be implemented. So, what is the alternative? The first level, where possible, now moves to the second level, the state level for solution. Where that cannot happen, four other options are open. The options are that the people who should have been beneficiaries would resort to quacks and undocumented health workers, engage in self-medication, descend to the level of seeking alternative help from native doctors, spiritualists and herbalists or simply resign to fate and wait for death.


Statistics have it that out of the 30,000 Primary Health Centres nationwide only about 2,500 or a meagre 8.3% are functional. If this is not a bad report, I wonder what else is. The implication is that diseases that could have been arrested or prevented at lower levels are left to blossom into unimaginable national epidemic dimensions. Given this state of affairs, the Federal Government has had to intervene with the Nigerian Primary HealthCare Development Agency (NPHCDA) to take care of primary healthcare needs and immunization. I must acknowledge the positive impact this agency has made.

On the State level, we have seen that most general hospitals are ill equipped and ill funded and have dilapidated to terrible levels. The Federal government is now saddled with the responsibility of maintaining Federal Medical Centers in the States as well as the statutory responsibility of managing teaching hospitals and other tertiary centers like research institutes. But the Central government has had to intervene in both the primary and secondary levels where the owners have failed.

It is important to examine this structure to be sure it is working. My sense is that it is not.


MEDICAL INFRASTRUCTURE



Closely related to funding and structure is infrastructure. My personal contact with healthcare professionals both in Nigeria and abroad shows that one of the major reasons for the brain drain we mentioned earlier is the poor medical infrastructure and ineffective medical policy of the country. Some of our doctors would have stayed back if they were assured of support in terms of modern infrastructure for them to operate. In a country of over 180m people, one can count on one’s fingers, the number of sophisticated equipment like MRIs, CT scan equipment, dialysis centres, and cardiology centres we have. Even if you are the best doctor available, you will record very limited success if you rely on antiquated equipment for diagnosis and treatment. So, when our brothers and sisters look at the infrastructural support available in the country, the urge to relocate becomes more imperative. Yet this is a country that hands over a billion dollars annually to other countries (its competitors) for medical bills. We must, therefore, agree on how to put the required infrastructure in place for our hospitals to compete. You must trust me on this, the money we are talking about here is very small. We must also discuss efficiency and cost effectiveness in terms of shared services and infrastructure. Is there any use duplicating equipment in a particular location where services could be shared and its savings passed on to the consumer?



MEDICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY



This is probably the most important aspect of this subject. How is healthcare delivery organized? Who is in charge? Does he understand the issues? Is he just a quota minister representing his state or he is a professional who would resign if decisions that impinge on his performance are taken? We remember the late Prof. Olikoye Ransome Kuti, who was Minister of Health in Babangida’s government. Kuti who was also Fela’s elder brother moved the nation’s healthcare delivery system to a crescendo through his focus on primary healthcare Programme. How did he do it? He was clear about where he was headed and astute as a professional. It was easy for everyone to follow him. It happened before, during a military administration, it can happen again, but the appointment has to be devoid of sentiments.

Access is also very important as the National Healthcare Insurance Scheme was set up in 1999, to address. Several years after, just about 5% of the population has enrolled in the scheme.

The whole idea of this section is to point our attention to the fact that the success of any policy is dependent on the philosophy behind it. Sloganeering and propaganda will not cut it.

I have heard a few people raise stiff opposition to the discussion of the basis of our continued mutual existence. I think such position is misguided. I believe that the only choice we have is to sit down and talk. Some people refer to the constitution as sacrosanct. I agree with them to the extent that there is no new constitution in the horizon. Anytime a new constitution emerges, the present one becomes obsolete.

As we discuss, we should avoid the temptation to focus only on the very important subjects of the economy and politics. Any discussion that does not focus on having a heathy populace is meaningless. Like the saying goes, a healthy nation is a wealthy nation.

Press Release.


Light Cannot Go To Darkness, Alex Otti Remains In APGA.

The attention of Abia First Media Team has been drawn to a highly degrading, disparaging and demeaning online publication by Mr. Enyinnaya Appolos, the Chief Press Secretary to Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, wherein he tragically alleged that a revered Abia son and the face behind the progressive drive to redeem Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti has decamped to the PDP.

The picture which Appolos attached to the misleading post was taken yesterday at Chief ACB Agbazurere's mother's burial in Isialangwa South where Dr. Alex Otti and Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu encountered and had a handshake.

In political reportage, it's acceptable for people to use well scripted pieces to diplomatically indulge in wishful political permutations, no matter how utopian such permutations might look, but for a person occupying the seat of Chief Press Secretary to the governor to expressly and disrespectfully carry out such horrendous misinformation when he clearly knows same to be false speaks volumes of the characters desecrating sensitive and sacred Abia political offices courtesy of the accidental and unceremonial emergence of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu who was neither ready to be governor, nor ever elected by Abians.

Ordinarily, we wouldn't be dedicating time, energy, space and resources responding to such disgusting beer parlour puerile, but because we are conscious of the fact that God left Satan with some powers when thrown down from heaven, we are therefore compelled to unequivocally condemn as well as dismiss the false report by Enyinnaya Appolos, and urge our teeming APGA and Alex Otti supporters to view and treat the report as an idle gossip and provocative mumbo jumbo from the pit of hell.

Though we are shocked and highly embarrassed by the report, yet we are not surprised as Mr. Appolos and the Okezie Ikpeazu government are merely representing to the fullest what Abians think of them, which is; incompetence, visionlessness, unseriousness and confusion.

We wish to remind millions of suffering Abians that the determination of Dr. Alex Otti and APGA to bring the Ikpeazu and PDP tragedy to an end in 2019 is continuously emboldened by the consistent degeneration of the PDP government to a lower level on a daily basis, therefore Abians should neither panic nor think that their oppressors are invisible.

Finally, we courageously and expressly state that though Dr. Alex Otti has nothing personal against Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, except Dr. Otti's disapproval of his illegal emergence as governor and incompetent leadership, Dr. Otti has never contemplated and will never contemplate joining Ikpeazu in the PDP as that would amount to betrayal of suffering Abia masses whom Dr. Otti is striving to bring out from political slavery.

Dr. Alex Otti remains a full blooded APGA member, and a BOT member of the party at the highest level, and it will remain so until Abia is reclaimed and restored to Abians.


Signed
Ferdinand Ekeoma
Media Assistant to Dr. Alex Otti

Anambra: If It’s Not Broken, Don’t Mend It
October 9, 20172918

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI , Email: alex.otti@thisdaylive.com
OUTSIDE THE BOX

By Alex Otti; alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

Credit for the title of today’s piece goes to the erudite and brilliant scholar and former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, who reechoed the old maxim. Before I get into the business of this intervention, I must admit a few issues in the spirit of full disclosure.

The first is that I am not only a card carrying member of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, I am also a member of the Board of Trustees of the party, which is in power in Anambra State. Secondly, Willie Obiano is a longtime friend and brother and has been, in the last few decades. Thirdly, Willie was a professional colleague, as both of us worked in the banking industry about the same time in the last two decades and a half. While acknowledging these possible areas of conflict, I must quickly add that in the tradition of this column, we are going to deal with the subject matter devoid of bias.

History records that there is hardly any successful leader without a vision. In fact, the bible says that people perish for lack of vision. Leaders in the past century like Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr, and modern day leaders like Lin Kwan Yew, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Nelson Mandela, had one thing in common. They were or are all visionary leaders. They knew where they were going, even if it was not clear to their followers from day one. They set targets for themselves and had clear ideas of how to know when they got there. This is not necessarily the case with Nigeria. Most of our leaders come into governance, unprepared, clueless and without set deliverables, except may be to amass wealth for themselves and their cronies. There is this saying that “if you don’t know where you are going, any road takes you there”.


I can confidently say that Anambra state falls into the class of exceptions to this rule. This was taken to a new level with the assumption of office of Chief Willie Maduaburochukwu Obiano as the Executive Governor of the State on March 17, 2014. Obiano comes with excellent antecedents. Amongst several other educational qualifications, he holds a degree in Accounting, an MBA and the Fellowship of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. After a short stint at First Bank of Nigeria PLC, he joined Texaco Nigeria PLC as Accountant. After four promotions in eight years, he became the Chief Internal Auditor of the Company. He was so adept at his job that Fidelity Bank poached him in 1991 to head her Audit department. He received promotions virtually every year culminating in his appointment to the board as Executive Director in 2003. Having attained the retirement age of 55, he bowed out from Fidelity Bank in 2012. As the tenure of Peter Obi was ending, he contested election for the position of the Executive Governor of Anambra State in November 2013, and won.

Like Obiano himself would say, he came to the job well prepared. Beyond his education, experience and past performances, he had a clear strategic vision. He articulated his vision in a statement thus “to make Anambra State the first choice investment destination and most preferred location to site new industries”. He followed up with a mission statement as follows “to make Anambra State a socially stable, business friendly environment that would attract both indigenes and foreigners to seek wealth-creating opportunities”. As if these were not enough, he proceeded to set up an economic blue print known as the “Anambra Wheel of Development”. This blue print had four pillars as follows:

Agriculture

Industrialization

Trade and Commerce and

Oil and Gas



Having established the pillars, he went further to identify 12 enablers upon which the pillars would rest. These enablers speak to the legs upon which to anchor the 4 pillars. According to him, the enablers include Security, Education, Healthcare, Finance, Environment, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Power generation, Civil and Social infrastructure, Water and Sanitation, Hospitality and tourism, Judiciary, Youth and Sports and Information Technology.

By setting out with a strategic direction, it became easier to measure the performance of the administration. I must add that Vision and Strategy formulation are amongst the most important responsibility of leadership. It is something that cannot be done without an in-depth study and understanding of the environment. Once you have your strategy figured out and documented, it becomes easy to steer your team in the direction you want them to go and also measure performance. This sets Obiano apart from a lot of his peers. One more thing: Strategy should be specific to the environment and therefore, fit for purpose. Flowing from these, it is clear that a strategy that works for one state, may not necessarily work for another because all states are not the same. They don’t have the same demographics. I listened to a state governor do a poor imitation of Obiano’s strategy a few years ago. From the way the state is going today, it is clear the whole thing has fallen apart and little mention is made of the strategy in the recent times.



Having set the framework, it would not be out of place to look at how far the Obiano administration has gone in implementing the goals it has set for itself in its strategy document in the last 42 months. In the area of agriculture, the government has taken the bull by the horn. Agriculture alone has created close to 400,000 direct jobs and has attracted over $1.2 billion in private investments within the period under review. The government declared a rice revolution which led to the increase in rice production from about 80,000 metric tonnes per annum in 2014 to 322,000 metric tonnes presently. This means that the state is now self-sufficient in rice production as statistics shows that the annual consumption of rice in the state is 300,000 metric tonnes. In the last one year, Anambra has been exporting local vegetables to the UK. Readers will agree that this is not a mean feat, considering the very high standards that must be met before one can export food to the UK. This was done because the state showed more than a passing interest in the production and packaging of the product to ensure that international standards were met. Still on Agriculture, the world renowned SAB Miller that has a brewery in Onitsha would, henceforth, not buy sorghum, a major input for its products, from outside Anambra. At the instance of the government of Obiano, SAB Miller has entered into agreement with Delfarms, a local sorghum producer, to supply all the Sorghum that it requires for its 2.7 hectolitres brewery in Onitsha. To encourage more people to either go into farming or expand their capacity, Obiano has disbursed about N640m in agricultural loan to over 15,000 farmers in the state.


The administration knows very well that the agricultural value chain is not complete if it does not dovetail into industrialisation. So, the government does not just want to encourage primary products, but processing and packaging as added value. It has, therefore, created an enabling environment for local industrial production. In addition, it has also created incentives, concessions and financial support for small and medium scale enterprises and startups to cushion the effect of the harsh economy on genuine entrepreneurs. In response to this, hundreds of millions of private sector investments have found their way into Anambra State for industrial production. Nnewi and Onitsha have been the major beneficiaries of industrial investments. An industrial park is also being built by the government in Nnewi to take advantage of the traditional manufacturing capacity of the town.

Trade and Commerce are the natural turf of Anambra people. I doubt if there is any part of Nigeria that an Anambra trader would not be found doing business. The government has also given this sector, a boost as one of its pillars for economic development. To ensure that there is order and deliberate expansion, the government created the Anambra State Market Agency (ASMA), whose primary brief is to construct, rehabilitate and regulate commercial activities in the state. A lot of new markets are springing up and existing ones are receiving face lift.



On the Oil and gas pillar, prior to this time, Anambra had not been known as an oil producing state, inspite of the huge proven hydrocarbon deposits in the state. Exploration activities have been on in the state and companies like Orient Petroleum, which started producing oil before the inception of Obiano’s administration are receiving support by way of creating access to the communities where they operate. It is actually the bid to create access to the oil bearing communities that led to the construction of the longest bridge in the South East across the Omambala River. The government has also completed the mapping of identified oil and gas assets in the state for purposes of ease of concessioning. It has also initiated serious engagements with experts to produce electricity from the gas deposits in these communities.

Having assessed the state of the 4 pillars, we now turn to the enablers. Considering that there are many of them, we shall discuss just a few. Education is taken quite seriously in Anambra state. Starting from the last administration, the state became one of the best in education. The Obiano government has not only sustained this performance but has improved on it. Taking the NECO for instance, Anambra has continued to improve in its performance each passing year. It recorded 65% success rate in the 2015 academic year. Success here means students who made 5 credits including English Language and Mathematics. In 2016, the rate improved to 72% and this year, it further improved to 75%. In WAEC also, the state has continued to do very well. Anambra’s performance is not unrelated to the government’s holistic approach to education which emphasizes, student’s welfare, teacher’s motivation and welfare and conducive learning environment. Teachers are particularly key and in Anambra, no one is ever owed salaries unlike some states that I know.


Attention has also been paid to healthcare delivery for the state. Renovation and construction of primary health care facilities have been on the front burner of the administration. Several general hospitals have also been modernized while the Teaching Hospital at Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Amaku has benefitted from major structural and infrastructural upgrade. Several roads have been built and commissioned and Awka, the state capital has benefitted from several state of the art well-lit bridges. Anambra has been lucky to have the best road network in the South East and Obiano has ensured that hundreds of kilometres of new roads are added to the stable.

Perhaps, one of the greatest feats of the Obiano government is the Anambra Airport City project. The $5b project is being funded and constructed by the Chinese. It is a PPP initiative on the basis of Build-Operate and Transfer (BOT). The investors who are funding the project completely have given a timeline of 3 years for completion and commissioning. This would open Anambra up for further business.

For those who know Anambra well, you would agree that a major problem that the state had battled with, over a period of time is security. Violent crimes, armed robbery and kidnapping were synonymous with the state. In fact, some areas in Onitsha were abandoned as criminal gangs took them over. On resumption of office in 2014, Obiano took on security concerns headlong. Areas that were captured by criminals came under heavy bombardment by the security operatives who were empowered with equipment, vehicles, helicopters, and gunboats. Criminals got the message: that there was no safe abode for them in Anambra State. They all fled and today Anambra is reputed to be the safest state in the country.


On the management of the Anambra economy, Obiano has demonstrated that he understands how the economy works. Readers would recall that on several occasions in this column, we had advocated that the way out of the recession was to stimulate the economy by massive spending. The Obiano government rolled out a comprehensive stimulus package for the state. While other states were owing salaries, Obiano did not only pay workers, he actually increased salaries and gave workers tax breaks. This helped in empowering consumers which in turn helped in jump-starting production. Anambra is one of the few states that do not owe salaries and probably the only state that increased salaries during recession.

From the above assessment, there is no doubt that Governor Obiano has done very well. The first is that he is clear about his vision in the state. He was able to articulate them into measurable parameters. He established a template that would help achieve the objectives. He also has combined skills and experience to ensure flawless execution. The first phase of execution has been excellent in spite of the challenges of the economy which was not envisaged at the formulation stage. Given this kind of scorecard, and given that Anambra people are very discerning, my expectation is that they would renew the mandate of this fine and urbane gentleman to enable him complete the job he started close to four years ago. Like the saying goes, one does not need to change a winning team. All I can say is that all well-meaning citizens of the state should join hands now with their indefatigable Governor, Willie Obiano to lay the foundation for Anambra State of the future. Over to you Anambrarians!

Aren’t We Too Many?
September 4, 201711080

OUTSIDE THE BOX BY ALEX OTTI , Email: alex.otti@thisdaylive.com
OUTSIDE THE BOX
BY ALEX OTTI

“A s for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it” Genesis 9:7(AMP).
A good friend of mine called to share the “good news” of the arrival of his bouncing baby boy. Congratulations Aminu; by the way how many children do you now have, I asked? It is not usual to count our children but since it is you, I will go out of my way to tell you. This is the eleventh one. I will probably do two or three more and reluctantly stop. Aminu, what has come over you? What point are you trying to make? Do you want to have up to 14 children? I queried in quick succession. But as a Christian, you should know better, Aminu retorts. God directed that we should have many children. Aminu ends up with the above Bible quote, reciting it perfectly. As I protested that as a devout Muslim, I had expected him to justify his unbridled child rearing expertise with the Quran, Aminu pointed my attention to the Hadith which says “marry and propagate to make Rasulallah(sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam) proud on the day of quiyamah. A Hadith is a report describing the words, actions, and habits of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH). From both an Islamic and Christian point of view, it appeared I had lost the argument about population and therefore birth control.


Before we delve deeper into the issue of population and birth control, it may not be out of place to set the stage properly. There is still a big debate about how many we are in Nigeria. This debate continues to rage because there hasn’t been any credible population census in Nigeria in the recent times. The first census was done in 1863 and it covered the Lagos colony only. A second one was held in 1871 and subsequently, the colonialists held a census every 10 years. It was not until 1911, that a nationwide census exercise was conducted which put the population at 16.1m. By the 1921 census, the population had grown to 18.7m. A few more head counts held in 1931, 1953, 1963 and 1973. Two more were conducted in 1991 and 2006. One recurring feature in the head count exercises held in Nigeria is that they yielded results that were disputed by large sections of the populace. The 1953 census, for instance, put the population at 31.6m. This result was greeted with widespread controversy as it was said to have understated the population of the country. In 1962, a census was done that produced a figure of 45m. An allegation of over-counting led to the cancellation of the entire exercise and a repeat in 1963. The figure produced in the 1963 exercise was 55.6m. This was accepted in spite of the unrealistic annual growth rate of close to 6% from the 1953 figures. The 1973 census was canceled outrightly by the government for not being transparent.
The 1991 census, which was not without its own share of controversy, produced a figure of 88.9m with an annual growth rate of 2.9%. The last one that was held in 2006 generated so much dispute that it was almost aborted. The South East insisted that the questionnaire must include two parameters of ethnic group and religion while the North opposed that. Both sides threatened to boycott the census if their recommendations were not adopted. Eventually, the Northern position prevailed and the census was conducted returning a figure of 140m people. It is instructive that our head counts have always been marked with controversy. If one group did not claim that it was undercounted, it would claim that another group was over counted. The reason for this is political. Politicians are always positioned to take an undue advantage of headcounts. It is understood that the allocation of resources, the creation of states and local governments and other sharing formulae are based on the number of people in the different parts of the country. I can remember people from one section of the country alleging that those from another section counted both animals and humans to make up the huge number reported in the 1991 census. It is important to point out that the word ‘census’ actually means counting everything, as opposed to taking samples. It is therefore strange that key elements like tribe and religion should be excluded from Nigerian census exercises and I am not aware of anywhere else where such key statistics are excluded.


The 2006 census was one of the most disputed, with Lagos State conducting a parallel census along with the Federal Government. At the end of the exercise, the National Census produced 9m as the population of Lagos. The parallel census by the Lagos state government produced a population of 17.77m.This dispute ended in the Census tribunal which gave judgement in favour of Lagos and ordered a recount in some Local government areas in Lagos. Even though the recount was not done, Lagos insisted that it was useful to prove that the National Population Commission did not have reliable figures.
A lot of people were excited when the erudite chemist and former MD of Nigerian Breweries, Festus Odimegwu was appointed the Chairman of the National Population Commission by the Jonathan government. This was because, given his brilliance and superlative performance in the private sector, Odimegwu was going to do a thorough job. Before he could settle down, he was removed under controversial circumstances. Shortly after his appointment, he had commented that the country had not had a credible census for decades owing to falsification by politicians for selfish reasons. This comment which, by the way, is very true, upset some high ranking politicians who worked for his removal. Bingo! He was shown the way out.
The next census which was to be conducted in 2016 has now been deferred to 2018. As 2018 approaches and as funds don’t seem to be available for the successful conduct of the exercise, it is very unlikely that it will hold. Again, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has reportedly advised that 2018 is unrealistic in view of the General elections coming up in 2019. This is without prejudice to the demarcation of enumeration areas embarked on by the National Population Commission last year.
The United Nations recommends that Census should be done every ten years to account for changes in demographics and population dynamics. Because we lack reliable data emanating from a credible census, we have had to rely on projections and rough estimates for planning and indeed everything else. According to the National Population Commission, Nigeria’s population is about 183m. On the basis of United Nation’s estimates, the population of Nigeria has been put at about 192.8m as at yesterday, Sunday, September 3, 2017. This means that about 2.55% of the total world population are Nigerians and we are the 7th most populous country in the world. With this kind of growth rate, it is estimated that we would be nearing 400m people by the year 2050, becoming the third most populous nation in the world with over 4% of the world’s population as Nigerians. A few people are up in arms, disputing these numbers, insisting that our population is grossly overstated. The sad news, however, is that the agitators are unable to come up with a different estimate since no census has been held in the last decade or more.



You may choose to slice and dice it anyhow; the truth remains that we are a very large country by population. That we continue to grow by frightening proportions becomes even more worrisome. A lot of people have used religion to justify their procreativity. Some have insisted that what is important is the capacity of parents to provide for the well-being and education of their children rather than the number. Unfortunately, it is a well-known fact that most of the culprits of a large number of children are those who cannot afford it. In the past, it was argued that the logic of having many children was for labour to help with farming. That argument holds no water in the current dispensation where farming has become mechanized. In the world of technology, artificial intelligence, robotics and electric and driverless cars, the larger the population, the more the unemployment figures. We must admit that the issue of overpopulation is not absolute. That a country has a very large population does not necessarily condemn it to penury. After all, China, for instance, has over 1.3 billion people, but most of them are productively engaged. The capacity of the country to manage the large population is what is critical. Since it is clear that we are not in a position to productively engage our people, it would be an act of irresponsibility to continue growing at our current rate. At the moment, most facilities, which are inadequate in the first place, are over stretched. Hospitals are in very short supply, education is more of a privilege than right. Housing is in deficit, power is a scourge, transportation is struggling and most importantly, hunger has become a permanent companion of many of our citizens. Unemployment has become our nemesis and the economy continues to wobble. The question, therefore is, why should we continue multiplying when we know we are unable to provide for even the existing population? My position is that it would be a disaster if we double our population within the next three decades. We must, therefore, do something very drastic if we do not want to witness savagery by that time.

Literature links population explosion to several factors. One of them is mortality rate. It is argued that owing to the decline in death rate and the decline in infant mortality rate as a result of rapid improvements in medicine, world population has witnessed an exponential growth. There has also been a sharp rise in birth rates, again attributed to improvements in medicine that have more people being fertile. On this note, some mischievous fellow once quipped that the best form of population control is to replace the first ‘P’ in population with a ‘C’! Migration has also made some parts of the world receive a lot of people that have impacted on the population. Lack of education which has made a few people reject birth control measures is another factor. In the same vein, religious and traditional beliefs have been adduced as reasons why birth control and other measures to reduce procreation are not popular. In our case, the issue of migration and decline in death rate cannot be said to be major reasons why our population is increasing in such an alarming manner.


Literature is also replete with population theories which have either been accepted or discarded. The first attempt to call the attention of the world to the population crises was made by a renowned economist Thomas R. Malthus in 1798. His theory which was later termed pessimistic, simply warned that population was growing in geometric progression while food supply was growing at arithmetic progression. He, therefore, recommended what he called “preventive measures” to manage population growth. These preventive measures include late marriages, birth control, and celibacy. He added that if the preventive measures were ignored, “positive measures” will be the consequence which man had no control over. Positive measures would include starvation, hunger, strife, pestilence, civil war and natural disasters. Both of them would achieve the same purpose but one would be more destructive than the other. After roundly condemning Malthus, many other theories had been propounded which were also criticized until the more popular and acceptable “theory of demographic transition” which is based on the actual population trends of advanced countries. According to this theory, every country passes through three different stages of population growth. In the first stage, the birth rate and the death rate are high and the growth rate of population is low. In the second stage, the birth rate remains stable but the death rate falls rapidly. As a result, the growth rate of population increases very swiftly. In the last stage, the birth rate starts falling and tends to equal the death rate. The growth rate of population is very slow. While this theory is popular with western economists, it has its pitfalls. It assumes that there is a historical trajectory that all the countries of the world must pass through. Science does not support this and the experiences of countries like Singapore that transited from 3rd world to the first world put a lie on that “trajectory”.


Without boring readers with theories, one is of the view that there is some sense in taking a look at the Malthusian theory again. Our experience in Nigeria seems to bear him out. Without preventive and deliberate efforts to check exponential population growth, we may be left with no option than the positive measures which will normally spiral out of our control. We are already witnesses to some positive fallouts as if Malthus saw this day in 1798. We are not strange to starvation, hunger, strife, kidnapping, armed robbery, violence and even war. The immediate fallouts may be different, but if you pause and investigate remote and latent causes, you cannot but agree with Malthus. The few facilities provided are already overstretched and deliberate efforts are not enough, nor are resources enough to make additional provisions to accommodate the many more mouths we have to feed. This explains why in spite of the economic growth of the past, we remained a very poor country. Anytime you translate absolute statistics to average numbers, the country begins to plummet towards the worst social and economic quadrants. Per capita income is one statistic that readily comes to mind. With a GDP of $415b by the end of 2016, Nigeria was the largest economy of the 53 African countries and the 26th largest economy out of 190 in the world. By the time you introduce the law of averages into the equation, Nigeria ends up with GDP Per Capita of $2260 and drops to number 17 in Africa and No. 133 in the world. If somehow, the number of people sharing this same GDP increases by a few more million, your guess should be as good as mine. It is therefore imperative that we seriously begin to look at policies to manage the rate of growth of our population. If we fail to do it, the positive force of nature may have to do it for us and in that case, it would be completely outside our control.

Permit me to use this opportunity to wish my Muslim readers Barkade Sallah. Eid Mubarak.